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Joe Morse
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Another of the illustration success stories who actually didn't study illustration, Joe Morse was an escapee from a Drawing & Painting Department
who found a home in printmaking. He has always been as interested in the
process of making images as in the product. He admits that whilst at college
most of the materials he worked with were quite lethal. He sensitized inch
thick aluminium so that it would pick up the grease in graphite pencils.
Printmaking allowed for an incredible variety of solutions for one image.
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Beach: Ink drawings from the artist's sketchbook.
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And Joe continues his exploration of variance now aided by computer, but he still works dangerously. His paintings are executed traditionally in oil and acrylic but informed by digital manipulation at the rough stage. And strangely, he works outside all year round (through Canadian winters) in a gas-mask, baseball cap (Detroit Tigers) headphones, and depending on the weather either a down filled 'pipeline worker' coverall or T-shirts. Joe works with solvents that burn through the paint and which are quite toxic in an open garage that is freezing in the winter and a magnet for skunk and raccoons in the summer. It's no wonder that he works fast.
Obsessed with drawing, Joe has also been teaching drawing for twelve years, which he claims has made him better at it. After leaving college he lived in Florence on an art grant, then studied in Mexico on a scholarship and Japan on another art grant. He feels that all of these influences are evident in his work, and regards himself as first and foremost a draughtsman. He uses paint to flesh out the graphic space of his work rather than create an illusion of depth, the precision of shape and design being challenged by the pull of the solvent. He is also very interested in how people read images and uses different directions in his work not as a gimmick, but rather as an ordering of visual ideas. He suggests conflict by placing two characters entering from opposite ends of the composition. The organization of visual elements express their relationship rather than a setting or relationship.
Very
much in his second life as an illustrator, Joe began illustrating by working
almost exclusively in educational books and kept his personal work very
separate as ‘art’. It was in 1993 that he started working
in the medium that he uses today, finally
convinced that the artist and illustrator needed to meet. Two pages in American Illustration 13 and a commission by Rolling
Stone confirmed this new direction. The cult of celebrity has
been good for him as he continues to create images of musicians, actors,
politicians, CEO’s and golfers. A Dutch design firm, the ubiquitous Kessels Kramer commissioned him to paint seven poster
images for a basketball tournament sponsored by Nike
that took place in nine European countries. He completed the job within
five days, and it led to numerous sport related commissions. Included
amongst these were an international T-shirt campaign for Nike and a billboard
campaign for the Guardian newspaper.
Joe
regards himself as a convert to illustration and like any good convert
is passionate about the practice, with a belief that illustrators bring
a wonderful skill set to the visual communications table. He loves the
challenge of visualizing text and the process of collaboration with an
art director. A recent piece for Vancouver magazine was
to illustrate the story of a stock-swindling woman who had become tabloid
news. Art Director Tom Brown linked his design to the
image and text creating a great context for each to be appreciated.
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And
the reach of illustration is phenomenal. Whilst showing his work to some
students in Toronto two years ago, one of the students stopped him. A recent émigré from Greece, he had torn down one of Joe's posters outside an Athens train station to hang in his room. Another student had been visiting family in Hong Kong and had purchased one of Joe's illustrated Nike T-shirt designs.
At the same time that he finished a review for Rolling Stone
of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers disc, he was also working
on a conceptual piece for the business magazine Kiplingers.
The ability to shift conceptual gears and to push the work to solve varied
client needs is, in his estimate, the hallmark of illustration.
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A good friend of Joe's, Alan Parker is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Davidson College in North Carolina. He pitched Salon magazine the proposal for the two of them to create a visual and text journal of the opening of the Tate Modern in London. Salon agreed and they found themselves as journalists on their way to London. Joe created images with the building as theme, as the massive former power plant dwarfed the art on its walls. It was a great opportunity to co-author through images and it demonstrated how illustration with its point of view and its graphic power can be a unique alternative to photo-journalism.
Tate Modern: Salon magazine
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You sometimes wonder about what drives you. I illustrate full-time, I also direct a graduate program in illustration, and I have 2 small children, Jackson 3 and Parker Lily 8 months. I'm the youngest of 7 children and until I was 5 years old I had no idea trees had leaves. I received my first pair of glasses and could actually see my parent's features for the first time as well. Maybe this early loss of seeing has made me want to pursue the visual even more or maybe I should stop reading pop psychology! My wife Lorraine Tuson is a talented illustrator and designer and her uncompromising critiques of my work are still as honest as when I first met her as an Art Director I worked for 17 years ago'.
Mark McGwire : Nike / MLB
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