Cleve Morgan

Cleveland Morgan’s maturation as a painter mirrors the same process of maturation in Jamaica’s cultural institutions, since a great deal of his artistic achievements are due to their foundation. Introduced to art through his local secondary school teacher, he was encouraged to study formally and was one of the first students to benefit from formal art classes at the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts after its establishment in the 1950’s. Like a handful of young people from that era, he also benefited from a British Council scholarship and continued his studies at the St Martin’s School of Art. Returning to Jamaica in the 1970’s he became an art teacher and continued to exhibit his work regularly.A strong draftsman, Cleveland Morgan works are very much a product of their time. His concern for society was reflected in images of poverty, oppression ad transcendence. Strongly nationalistic, his images of men and women are heroic rooted in the Jamaican experience of struggle and survival. Influenced by his peers, his imagery can be stylistically compared to artists such as Christopher Gonzales and Osmond Watson. Like many artists during the 60s and 70s he also flirted with abstraction employing modernist approaches to communicate that same themes.His work can be found in a number of local private collections as well as the National Gallery of JamaicaPA-S