Bart J Morse (b. 1938)

View from Casa Seton, Japanese Stencils, 1983
Watercolour, 40” x 28”

View from Casa Seton, Japanese Stencils" is a figurative, interior composition watercolor and collage featuring a showering woman in a Deco tiled bathroom. As in other works from the series, collage elements are used to various effect, sometimes as objects in the room (textured paper as a rug) sometimes flattening space or helping create it through a window. In this case, a bird stencil print becomes a flat shade-pull, while on the other side of the window a "rhinoceros hornbill" collage bird and a bit of jungle foliage with monkeys are outside animal voyeurs. The sensitive rendering of the inside nude and tension with the natural forces outside makes this one of the more overtly erotic paintings from the series.

Morse used photography he took of models as source imagery for several paintings in the series. The bird stencils and hornbill are from "Research: Design in Nature; Field Museum of Natural History" by John Gilbert Wilkins, 1926.

Courtesy of Aaron & Rebecca Morse.
Held in Los Angeles, California, United States of America.