Sarah McRae Morton

About

Sarah McRae Morton grew up painting in a barn loft in Lancaster Pennsylvania. She currently lives and works between the US and Cologne, Germany. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and trained under artists Myron Barnstone in Coplay, Pennsylvania and Odd Nerdrum in Norway. She has received fellowships to pursue gusts of curiosity in art historical research in Europe and to attend residency programs such as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Morton’s paintings are invented portraits of her ancestors and historical figures – people from her own life, from books and paintings, and from her travels and stories learned. Her work has drawn from time immersed in landscapes from the coal fields of Appalachia to the wilderness of the North West, to the history steeped and cobble streets of Paris, where history- the written, the natural, and the told around campfires and cafe tables informs her paintings. The events and people illustrated are not bound by time or fact but are imbued with ghosts and artifacts from cross sections of history. Sarah’s work is wildly romantic, with an earthy palate and energetic movement around the canvas that quiets on key moments – detailed renderings of the face of a bear, the lips of a lover, the fox stole around a poet’s neck. The paintings seem to flicker to life with her spirited brush strokes.

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