Joe Morzuch is an observational painter currently residing in Starkville, MS.  In addition to his studio work, which deals primarily with the still life and self-portrait, he is an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University.  In 2006 he received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  He has taught at the college level for nearly 20 years, teaching courses in foundations, drawing, and painting.  His work has been exhibited nation-wide and abroad.

 

 

"I am interested in the visual and communicative potential of objects that are cast off, discarded, and over-looked.  Inherent to still life is an engagement with the mundane and domestic, as well as the notion of an arrested visual experience.  These subjects, their intrinsic intimacy, and working from life are rich with pictorial and conceptual possibilities.

I paint in a responsive manner directly from the motif, depicting objects at or near life-size and within reach of the viewer.  I am drawn to certain objects for their familiarity, simplicity of form, and potential to connect with viewers through a shared experience of their use.  At the core of my practice is a curiosity to uncover and reconstruct a visual order.  Adjustments of proportion, tone, and color create an articulation of form and space built on extended observation.  The paintings retain traces of these revisions, functioning as both image and object.

There is a sense of loss in something isolated, empty, or discarded.  To engage with objects of this sort is to affirm their continued significance, regardless of age or condition.  This is where the objects in my paintings operate metaphorically, representing the body, an individual, or most often myself.  In this way painting is a form of reanimation".