Morgan Earl has spent most of his adult life engaged in the creative fields of graphic and electronic arts. He now expresses his love of Canada’s outdoors with his photographic skills in what he sums up as “an impressionist approach to camera imagery”.

He spends much of his time on rivers, and mostly rivers that offer up swift-moving white water – not hard to find in his neck of the woods.

His tastes in fine art run from the 19th century French risk takers such as Van Gogh and Gaugin to the Canadian Group of Seven. These artists were, in their era, unafraid to cross artistic boundaries and genres to express their new visions. In short, rebels with a brush.

Morgan paints with his camera. His photo-based impressionist images are proof that taking the road less traveled has its own reward.


Artist's Statement: Liquid Mirrors

Life in the north. Early spring. A swift-running river at hand. I’m caught up with the sheer power; the deadly, cold silence of the water surging by. The longer I study the surface, the deeper I see; so many tints and shades of the day dancing back at me. I am looking into a liquid mirror. I’m able to see through it.

River after rapid after creek after falls, I start paying close attention to the surface shapes driven by the riverbed rock. The water bounces back the sky, the riverbanks, the sunlit bottom. The shaped colors bend into repetitive patterns. I’m looking at a veritable canvas-in-motion. The water surface ‘paints’ itself with brush strokes across the aperture. I’ve discovered the right moments from so many variables; motion, light, color, texture all teased by a random, capricious world. Each image is unique. I can anticipate. I can wield my camera, my brush. But the real joy is capturing that unforeseen.

This series of impressionist fine art photo paintings is my homage to Canada’s rich river heritage.