First Look 2024 Artist Interview: C E Morse

We took a moment to dive into the artistic processes behind the artists in First Look 2024 to learn about their process, projects, and what inspires them to create work.

(Panopticon) How did you become a photographer? what drove you to choose art as a career?

(Morse) I was given a camera my second year at RISD and shot color slides for about a year. Halfway through my 3rd year (I was a sculpture major) I took a photography course for winter session. I guess you’d say it really clicked; I took another elective photo course that spring and took three courses at what was then the Maine Photography Workshops in Rockport, ME. When I returned to RISD, I switched my major to photography and was lucky enough to draw Aaron Siskind as a major. Photography and art is a passion; I will always be creating something in one medium or another.

What’s the intended audience for your work, if you have one? What communities are you trying to speak to?

Everyone & anyone; my work is mostly abstract: It is not political or religious, hopefully it compels people to imagine rather than be repelled.

What does your photographic/artistic practice look like?

A lot of road trips, a lot of exploration & experimentation as well as a fair amount of computer time these days, as I now shoot digital images.

What compels you to choose your subjects? What do you find calls to you?

I spend a lot of time in vintage auto salvage yards and boatyards where I discover incredible visual elements that inspire me the same way as do the great abstract painters. I hunt for this wild art, looking for patterns, color, texture & composition in subjects both man-made and natural; embellished by chance and patinated by nature, with an unspoken history of random events that can only be guessed or imagined. There is no reference to the identity or the scale of what I photograph; the abstract imagery coaxes a personal interpretation contingent upon the viewer’s imagination.
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau

Are there any particular messages or dialogues that you want people to take away from your work?

I enjoy creating a compelling images from subjects that are ugly or overlooked; making silk purses from sow’s ears, so to speak; I enjoy the irony that the beautiful image framed on the wall is actually a photograph of a dumpster; I enjoy the conversation that follows. I particularly like to hear what other people see I’m my work: to share in their imagination.

Be curious. Look closely at things, especially old things; imaging the layers of time; the history; the mystery. Use your imagination. Wonder.

How do you feel your work has changed your relationship with nature and discarded objects?

The fight against time & deterioration is a constant struggle. On one hand, in respect to the vintage vehicles I own, I hate rust & patina; on the other hand it is what I hope to find out in the world to photograph; subjects that have gone so bad as to be “good” (to my eye.)

My work; my aesthetic has not so much changed as has broadened in two ways:
I started combining my abstract images creating my own layers of deterioration, rust, patina, etc: the Farrago Series, five of which are now on exhibit at Panopticon Gallery.

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." - Edgar Degas

I have also been shooting images from a drone; capturing the abstract designs in the earth below, both natural as well as man made.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes." - Marcel Proust.

Learn more about C E Morse here. All work is available for purchase. Please contact director@panopticongallery.com