PRESS RELEASE
JRB ART AT THE ELMS PRESENTS
Caryl Morgan: “Night Travel”
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma---JRB Art at The Elms presents works by Caryl Morgan in a solo show titled “Night Travel” alongside works from the gallery’s varied inventory. The exhibition opens with a reception from 6:00 to 10:00 pm on Friday, March 4th, 2016, during the Paseo’s First Friday Gallery Walk and continue through Sunday, March 27th.
Caryl Morgan is a nationally recognized contemporary realist watercolor artist whose primary interest is working with vivid, highly saturated watercolor. Caryl has been using vintage signage as subjects for 5 years and utilizes close-angled perspectives with strong shadow or contrast to elevate the images she paints to an iconic status. For the current exhibit at JRB Art at The Elms, she has focused on night scenes featuring neon signs with eclectic western motifs found along the nation’s highways and byways: “Night Travel.” Within the series, viewers travel with the artist along the Southwest’s most scenic routes, identifying not with the land itself but the human built landscape of signage and neon. Locals will recognize at least one landmark; the Tower theatre sign, around the corner from the gallery on 23rd street. Painted before its recent re-lighting, Caryl’s watercolors light up the work in an imagined ode to its former, and now current, brilliance. “Night Travel” is an ode to the southwest, to the human penchant for identification; each sign proclaiming the individuality of the people it represents, straining to stop traffic and bring passersby into the folds of the community behind the sign. The brilliant watercolors lend themselves to the realism of the signage while heightening the nostalgic impact of these paintings. “Night Travel” depicts a vintage urban landscape we will either lose or must preserve.
Caryl’s paintings were recently featured as the Oklahoma component in the national exhibition of “America’s Road, The Journey of Route 66”, at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Gaylord-Pickens Museum in OKC. Additional solo exhibitions include “Along Route 66”, Springfield, Missouri in 2013, “Traveling West”, Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, Kansas 2012, “Interstate Icons and Other Road Side Attractions”, North Gallery, Oklahoma State Capitol 2011 and “Selected Works”, Eleanor Hayes Art Gallery, Northern Oklahoma College in 2011. Recent group shows include the Kansas Watercolor Society National Exhibition- Wichita, KS, Watercolor USA-Springfield, Mo, Vox Femina-Springdale, AR, The Colors of Humanity – Red-Online, Art Now 2015-OKC, OK, and Korea / Japan / USA International Watercolor Exhibition Exchange, Seoul, South Korea.
Morgan is a signature member of the Watercolor USA Honor Society as well as other state and regional watercolor societies. Through Watercolor USA Honor Society she has been an active participant in a cultural exchange program with both Japan and South Korea and her work was exhibited in those countries. Her work is represented in private, corporate and permanent museum collections throughout the United Sates. She works from her studio, Earth Road Graphics, in historic downtown Newkirk, OK.