Morris Graves was a self-taught artist who has spent a lifetime creating spiritually realized symbols. For Graves, the act of painting is informed by meditation from which mental images become the source of his works. His images possess and evoke a very human emotional consciousness
Often associated with a group of painters from the Pacific Northwest, known as the Northwest Masters, which included Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan and Mark Tobey, Morris Graves became an overnight sensation in 1942 when his work appeared in a show of new American talent at the Museum of Modern Art.
Over his lifetime, he had several solo museum shows, including retrospectives at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, 1948, the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1956 and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., 1984.
