Artist Clarence Morgan combines painting, prints and collage drawings to express the lyrical form of language and spirit in abstraction in the current Foster Art Gallery exhibit “Lyrical Meditations.”

Director of the Foster Art Gallery Tom Wegener, said the gallery rotates between various art forms and thought it would be nice to have a painting exhibit.

Morgan was recommended to him by another art gallery as somebody who not only has high quality art but can interact well with the students.

Morgan, a professor at the University of Minnesota, visited UW-Eau Claire Jan. 29 to discuss his artwork and to meet with art students about their own paintings.  He spoke on who he is as an artist, where he has come from and how his art has evolved over the years.

“Clarence met individual painting students and critiqued their work and talked to them a little about what their goals were, their thought processes,” Wegener said. “And kind of gave some advice on what he feels are strong points and what he feels are maybe some of their weaknesses.”

The art gallery committee always tries to hold a forum with the artist to give the students more personal exposure to the art and greater insight into the thought process behind the work.

Junior fine arts major Ally Collins went to Morgan’s artist talk and found his work to be very enjoyable and thought he was quite an interesting person.

Collins said Morgan’s art is very structured and looks thought out, but actually is completely process based. Morgan will experiment on the canvas without ever sketching ideas first.

“What his quote was is that, ‘having an idea in your head is the worst place for it to be,’” Collins said. “Which is the weirdest thing ever because I would never think like that.”

Senior Emma Felty is a gallery attendant for the exhibit and said choosing artwork is done one to two years in advance by a gallery committee. Currently, the committee is selecting artists for the 2017 season.

Felty says the exhibit will receive several hundred visitors during the time it is open. Morgan’s “Lyrical Meditations” artist forum brought in around 110, Wegener said, and hopes it will attract a couple hundred more throughout the course of the exhibit.

The exhibit is open 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 1 – 4:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and 6 – 8 p.m. Thursday evenings in the Foster Art Gallery in Haas. It runs Jan. 29 – Feb. 19.