CityCrush artist profile: Dallas artist Jennifer Morgan

by Wendi McGowan of City Crush

Jennifer Morgan paints emotion and energy into her canvases, creating what appears to be a deer paired with cherry blossoms or simply a great ape, but the reality of these works are innate and very personal portraits. We imagine it’s that gentle almost maternal cradle of the paintbrush that moves through the eyes of her subjects and wraps itself around the viewer. Jennifer Morgan has been a full-time artist for seven years. She currently resides and works in Dallas, and frequently collaborates with designers, galleries, and various other art enthusiasts.

“I have been creating ever since I can remember,” says Jennifer. “It was always my favorite thing to do growing up. While in high school, I painted clothes and sold them in Dallas boutiques. After a brief stint of not painting, but teaching art to disadvantaged youth, I began painting more in college when I had the resources to focus more on my education.”

She sold her first paintings after showing them to a friend on her way home from my college senior exit review. He bought three of them. She worked in graphic design immediately after finishing school with her degree from the University of North Texas. She quit that job in 2000 to execute her first solo exhibition where half of the work sold that first night.

For the next year and a half, she freelanced, waited tables, and eventually took on a temporary full time job because it was too good to pass up working as the graphic designer in a big law firm downtown Dallas. She concentrated exclusively on her work, painting in the evenings and weekends and showing in various venues throughout Dallas. She was able to leave that job at the beginning of 2002 and she has made a living as a full-time artist ever since.

“I have created and sold over two thousand paintings in my career. I partnered with JonesWalker Home (a furniture boutique in Dallas) in 2003, and they have sold 3/4 of all those paintings,” says Jennifer. With work that has been sold in Dallas, Houston, and New York, Jennifer says, “I have clients and paintings that reside in Spain, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma. I have sold my work in galleries, furniture boutiques, restaurants and cafes, hotels, salons, coffee shops, high rises, and from my website. And, while all of my clients are interesting in their own ways, but I think that two stand out in particular: Tom Leppert, the mayor of Dallas and Jaret Reddick, the lead singer for Bowling for Soup.”

Jennifer has had close to two hundred commissions thus far in her career. Neiman Marcus commissioned four paintings for their “Art of Italian Style” promotion in 2005. Neiman’s in turn made prints of the four paintings and used them in all of their a stores throughout the country. After that, they commissioned a series of 12 paintings for internal use.

What inspires Jennifer? Everything. On a conceptual level: nature, light, people, stories, faith, experiences, music, dreams, hopes, coincidences, concerns, worries, love, perspective, books, shadows, aromas, memories, music, art ... and the list goes on.

What inspires her to do what she does? “I want to make a difference. I have achieved success in my own mind because I can inspire other people to listen to themselves, and acknowledge the beauty and wonder on this planet. I do what I love for a living,” Jennifer says. “I help others through the dozens of paintings I have donated to causes I believe in … the stories I hear of the smiles and joy people get out of my paintings. That’s inspiring.”

Her current series of work entitled “We’re All Pink” has a dominant nature theme, mostly animals. Jennifer has been working on this series since 2005 and the title encompasses connectedness. The same life flows through everything. Something that really inspired this body of work was an excerpt from a book by Henry Beston called “The Outermost House.”

“The rules I live by would entail: living in the present; being thankful and mindful on a daily basis; doing my best to live responsibly and efficiently; approaching people and situations with an open and non judgmental mind while still keeping a hold on lessons learned. I am surprised by things on a daily basis, and I love that … it makes life almost surreal.”