Break," a painting in Andrea Morgan's RancHER series.
Andrea Morgan in her studio near Ovando showing pieces from three of her collections. In her day job, Morgan is a restoration ecologist and landscaper.
Curiosity led the way for Ovando artist Andrea Morgan to learn new ways of expressing herself through mixed media artwork.
Morgan's lifetime of creating led to making and selling paper mache roosters and other animals in 2009. She upcycles paper maps, old encyclopedias and recycled books for the paper mache. She became acquainted with selling her work at Montana Made fairs and displaying in a few local galleries.
Through an online art class in 2020, Morgan found another outlet for her curiosity and creativity. When her youngest child left home for college, she applied for a scholarship for the 12-week Creative Visionary program from Art2Life.
Since 2020 Morgan has been developing her abstract visionary style and now exhibits at galleries throughout the state and continues to sell at Montana Made Fairs. She was surprised to be interviewed and featured in Bozeman Magazine in March 2024.
"My ideas have been simmering for years," Morgan said. "When I gave myself permission to take an art class it really lit the fire in me."
For her paintings, Morgan uses an acrylic painting style that starts out abstract. Occasionally adding collage pieces of antique wallpaper or painted parchment paper to the design makes each piece unique. It becomes a process of adding and subtracting layers of paint, often over six layers. Some designs call for watercolor pencils or oil pastels as well. Her canvases are repurposed sections of wood doors from Home Resource in Missoula.
She works without a plan, allowing colors and concepts to evolve and shift, adding and subtracting paint, ideas and subjects until, as she puts it on her website, "I capture the wild thing before it runs away."
"I like to play around with colors, shapes and patterns," Morgan said. "Then something gets revealed, or I get an idea to focus on. I'm always looking for the surprise in the painting."
Morgan's current works represent cowboy culture through her "RancHER" series of slightly abstract ranch women in various poses. After seeing an historical photo of Black cowboys in Montana in the late 1800s, Morgan found Black cowboys with artsy hats showing up in her canvases. Other work depicts wildlife, horses and birds on bicycles.
The finished paintings are first treated with a varnish coat for UV protection and then with a cold wax finish.
"It adds a really nice luster and depth," Morgan said. "Some people assume my paintings are encaustic (another type of oil/wax mixture) because of that top finish."
Coming from Ovando, Morgan has brought her art to Montana Made fairs and applied to juried shows - where submissions are selected by a committee - and galleries throughout Montana and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Morgan loves what she does and finds that viewers are pulled in by the whimsical nature of her art, and then look deeper and catch nuances of history, humor and surprise.
"If you love what you're doing, other people will, too," Morgan said.
Morgan's work is shown on Instagram @Blueroosterarts and on her website http://www.andreamorganstudio.com.
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