On view in the Main and East Galleries from 4 November 2022 - 22 January 2023

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The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum is pleased to present Welcome to My World, which features 60 artworks by Susan Morrissey.
   • An exclusive Member Reception will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Friday 18 November 2022.
   • A Public Reception will be held from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday 20 November 2022 with a 2 p.m. gallery talk.

"Self-Portrait of the Artist", pastel

Susan Haas Morrissey, born in Veblen, S.D. in 1943, was raised in Lidgerwood, N.D. where she attended St. Boniface Grade School and Lidgerwood High School. She spent two years at North Dakota State University (NDSU), but left for the University of North Dakota (UND), encouraged by her mother to follow her heart—alas, NDSU had no art department at the time. 

Morrissey received a Bachelor of Arts degree from UND, a Master of Arts in painting from the University of Louisville, and a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from Indiana University. While at university, she had the good fortune to be mentored by artists who were recognized nationally in their fields including Robert A. Nelson, Marvin Lowe, and Rudy Pozzatti. Their influence is recognizable to the cognoscenti.

She left North Dakota in 1972 to live and work elsewhere in the midwest and mid-south before returning in 1996. Along the way she taught art at virtually every level, from kindergarten to university. It is rumored that as a young mother, her children were not given tableware until they had mastered the crayon. Valley City became her North Dakota home until 2011, when she relocated to Fargo.  

​Morrissey has exhibited in a notable number of invitational, solo, and juried national exhibitions throughout the country since 1979. Her artwork can be found in university, corporate, and private collections in the United States, Great Britain, and New Zealand.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have been working as an artist for the past six decades and exhibiting my work for over 50 years. I view the resulting body of work a visual journal. While it is a large and physically  cumbersome accumulation, I nonetheless consider it a journal because it remembers who I was at age 20, recalls whims and dreams of my youth, and reveals how I thought as a woman, mother, daughter, wife, and teacher; and what it was like to live and teach in both a large urban area and a small town. It records my thoughts on political issues that touched my life and reminds me of family members and friends now long gone.

In 1966, Jim O’Rourke honored me with my first exhibition. My work hung in the Rourke Gallery enhanced by background whispers of luxurious Baroque sound. Kay Cann, then The Forum art critic, wrote a review of the show. It was much too kind, probably because she was a nice lady. I have always felt a deep debt of gratitude to Jim for this early positive experience in my creative development. The opportunity allowed me to…dare I say…regard myself as an artist at a tender age.

This exhibit includes smatterings of work from many periods of my working life … some that I did not realize still existed until we began to downsize our digs, when folders and boxes and crates not opened for decades revealed labors of the past.

My work is almost as old as I am; it’s taken leaps and turns, rarely stopping long enough for me to get comfortable with it. Sometimes I look back and say to myself "what was all that about?” All I can say for sure, it’s come about in its time for one reason or another, I guess the “why” doesn't matter in the end. Had anyone asked one of my fore-mothers or fathers why they were moving the dirt around with a stick, would they have received a solid answer?

Art asks questions like that, and actually there are people who find their answers revealed in remnant traces of the movements left by a stick and the stick master. 

I'm one of those who find answers in the tracings, usually about myself. I figure once I know myself fully, I'll have a better handle on the rest of creation.

The cast of fictional and non-fictional characters who inhabit my paintings, prints, and sculptures exist on a plane where nonsense and meaningfulness collide. Within their confined environments, these characters narrate a broad spectrum of emotion. 

Though not necessarily obvious, my work most often reflected what was happening about me. Observation is my inspiration, be it of human relationship, animal behavior, or political climate. I enjoy humor and try to maintain a playfulness in my work whether of light or serious intent. In the end, you, the viewer, determine the success of my endeavor.

​—Susan Morrissey, 26 October 2022

"Mother's Baby", linoleum cut

"The Card Player", acrylic