MOORHEAD, MN (PNAN) – On view through Sunday, January 22, 2023 at the Rourke Art Gallery, the exhibition, “Welcome to My World” features 60 works of art by Susan Morrissey in the Main and East Galleries.
“…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,” expresses artist Morrissey. “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.”
She continues her self-survey, “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.”
Born in Veblen, S.D. in 1943, Hass-Morrissey 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, but left for the University of North Dakota, encouraged by her mother to follow her heart and 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.
In 1972, she journeyed from North Dakota to live and work elsewhere in the Midwest and mid-south. Along the way, before returning to her home roots in 1996, she taught art education at every level. Additionally, the artist 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.