Keith Morrison

Keith Morrison (born May 20, 1942, in Linstead, Saint Catherine Parish, Jamaica) is a Jamaican-born American artist whose painting-based practice explores Black history, Caribbean identity, migration, memory, mythology, and the psychic afterlives of colonialism. Working across painting, printmaking, and drawing, Morrison examines diasporic experience, social history, and spiritual symbolism through richly layered compositions that move between abstraction, figuration, and surrealist visual language.  Morrison earned both his BFA in 1963 and MFA in 1965 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work often engages Caribbean heritage, folklore, ritual, politics, and historical violence, using painting and printmaking to consider the relationship between personal memory and collective struggle across the African diaspora. Sources note that he worked as an abstract painter from roughly 1965 to 1985 before shifting toward a more figurative and surrealist mode deeply informed by Caribbean history and symbolism. He has also had a significant career as an educator, curator, critic, and academic administrator, and is professor emeritus at Tyler School of Art at Temple University.  His work has been exhibited in major solo and institutional presentations including the Katzen Arts Center, the University of Delaware Museums, and the 49th Venice Biennale. He has received the Commander in the Order of Distinction from Jamaica, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brandywine Workshop, and other honors for both his artistic and educational contributions. Keith Morrison lives and works in the United States.