Elemore Morgan, Jr. is acknowledged as the leading contemporary Louisiana landscape painter. The artist continues to reside in Vermilion Parish, in the heart of the rice growing region of Southwest Louisiana. However, after the ravages of Rita in Southwest Louisiana in 2005 Elemore Morgan, Jr. received assistance from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation which enabled him in 2007 to reside and to paint in New York City. This exhibition of Elemore Morgan’s work includes an impressive series of multi-paneled paintings of the Manhattan skyline painted in open air while he was staying in New York. Manhattan from Liberty State Park, composed of five panels and the two paneled Manhattan and The Brooklyn Bridge are both remarkable paintings. This exhibition also features paintings of the New Orleans landscape including a sweeping view of The Crescent City Connection.

Working primarily with acrylic on masonite panels the artist creates gestural paintings which reflect the dramatic skies and vast spaces of the prairies and marshes of South Louisiana and now also the dramatic skyline of New York. Often employing shaped panels which Elemore Morgan, Jr. feels are integral to the design and composition of the painting, Morgan’s works in his use of pictorial space reflect the great vistas he chooses to paint.

In his treatment of light and color, Morgan’s work has been linked to the Impressionist and Fauve painters of the 19th century. But his paintings are done out-of-doors at a particular site and they reflect the intense light atmosphere of the natural environment where they were painted. In this exhibition in addition to Southwest Louisiana that is also true of the paintings done in New Orleans.