The Daily Muse: Elise Morris, Painter

Elise Morris is a working artist exploring nature’s point of view, particularly fleeting moments of growth and change. Finding beauty in the unexpected, she works from a deep desire to learn her natural surroundings. Elise begins each piece with a simple line drawing and adds layers and layers of translucent paint. The resulting paintings and drawings explore concepts of nature, at the edge of abstraction.

Elise received a B.A. in painting and printmaking at UC Santa Cruz in 1997 and is the recipient of the Hyde and Benteen Irwin Scholarship for excellence and promise in the visual arts. She lived in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1998 until 2000. In 2005, she received a Master of Fine Arts from the JFK University Arts & Consciousness program in Berkeley, CA. She has exhibited extensively, and has work in corporate and individual collections throughout the U.S. and internationally. Elise currently lives and works in Northern California.

Elise is also the founder of The Studio Work, a blog in which she documents studio visits and interviews with Bay Area Artists.