Sarah McRae Morton

Biography

Sarah McRae Morton - Artists - Dowling Walsh

Sarah McRae Morton paints compelling, virtuoso narratives that appear as dreams or visions from another life, all opulently rendered with her skilled, animated brush. To the artist, they are “…constellations of the flickering worlds of the past, spinning thread between recorded history, family lore, mythology, and the natural world.” Morton began painting at an early age in a studio above the horse stalls at her family’s farm in rural Pennsylvania. During and after high school, she trained with the noted artist and educator Myron Barnstone, who taught her the virtues of classical design, technical drafting, harmonic color theory, and hard work. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. And furthered her studies with the celebrated figurative painter Odd Nerdrum in Norway, and in Rome, where an encounter with Carravaggio’s Conversion on the Way to Damascus reminded her "... wherever I went, my compass pointed homeward." Her deep knowledge of art history and literature informs her subjects. Rigorously composed and brilliantly executed, with “fever-dream intensity” and a rich, warm palette, Morton’s wildly romantic paintings flirt with the past while dancing with the present. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Sarah McRae Morton grew up in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. She furthered her art studies in Rome, Italy, and Norway, where she trained with painter Odd Nerdrum. Sarah received a Matisse Foundation Fellowship for her work on the local history of West Virginia and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited across the country and abroad. She currently lives and paints in Rockland, Maine.

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