Art: Pieces of Men

Jim Morris has long been a familiar figure in Santa Fe, N.Mex. A chunky mild-mannered, roughly dressed man, he looks older than his 48 years, talks in the hurt, hesitant fashion of Victor Moore Townspeople had heard, vaguely, that he was a painter. Some wondered how he got along, and what made him so sad.

Last week a Santa Fe gallery put 20 Morns canvases on show. He was indeed a painter, and an able one. Out-of-the-way though it was, the exhibition might well mark the beginning of national recognition for Jim Morris.

Painter Morris delights the eye with rich splashes of hot & cold color that shine with the clean light of the Southwest He tickles the fancy with such wryly original subject matter as Three Ghosts Beating a Ghost. He draws in a freewheeling, somewhat wobbly cartoon style but his figures are unerringly placed upon the canvas; they go together so naturally as to seem more concerned with themselves and each other than with being in somebody’s picture. More important, his balloon-headed people and quaking landscapes convey a good deal of Morris’ dominating idea: the insecurity and aloneness of man.

Some gallerygoers refused to believe that the paintings conveyed anything at all. Morris’ paintings do look like those of a child who knows too much and is unhappy about it, and they do develop from the childish process of doodling.

Morris doodles profusely, then puts each doodle out of sight to cool for weeks or months. Now & then he thumbs through them, picks one as the basis for a painting. His problem is to keep the childish freedom and directness of the first sketch while enriching it with color and emphasizing what it means to him. The Doctors carries a typical message: each of the three doctors is alone, they cannot agree on what is wrong with the patient the patient is also alone and without hope

“We live,” Morris glumly insists, “in a Donald Duck civilization . . . The trouble with modern man—and I definitely include myself—is that he is in pieces and some of the pieces are missing. He must make himself whole again to find out what his true relationships should be with other men and with the world. Perhaps that’s really what I’m trying to say “