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Associate Professor Joe Morzuch | Department of Art

Artist Statement

I am interested in the visual and communicative potential of objects that are cast off, discarded, and over-looked.  Inherent to still life is an engagement with the mundane and domestic, as well as the notion of an arrested visual experience.  These subjects, their intrinsic intimacy, and working from life are rich with pictorial and conceptual possibilities.     

I paint in a responsive manner directly from the motif, depicting objects at or near life-size and within reach of the viewer.  I am drawn to certain objects for their familiarity, simplicity of form, and potential to connect with viewers through a shared experience of their use.  At the core of my practice is a curiosity to uncover and reconstruct a visual order.  Adjustments of proportion, tone, and color create an articulation of form and space built on extended observation.  The paintings retain traces of these revisions, functioning as both image and object.  

There is a sense of loss in something isolated, empty, or discarded.  To engage with these forms is a kind of reanimation, an affirmation of a their continued significance regardless of age or condition.   

Recent Projects

While here at Mississippi State University and with the support of CAAD and the Department of Art, I have seen my work reach an expanding audience.  I am fortunate to have exhibited my paintings at galleries and museums across the nation, in the UK, and most recently in the international juried exhibition Figurativas 2025 at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, Spain, and Shift: Joe Morzuch and Ed Praybe with Tregony Contemporary in St. Mawes, Cornwall.   

My painting “Blue Self-Portrait 5” was included in the international survey of contemporary figurative art, Figurativas 2025 at the European Museum of Modern art in Barcelona, Spain, through January of this year.  Submitted works were reviewed by a panel of internationally regarded artists and curators, including Antonio Lopez Garcia, a world-renowned leader of contemporary realist painting, drawing, and sculpture.  My participation in this exhibition was a professional highpoint.   

A number of my paintings were displayed in the two-person exhibition, Shift: Joe Morzuch and Ed Praybe at Tregony Contemporary in St. Mawes, Cornwall.  Dealing specifically with the painted still life, the exhibition explored observation and the “quiet drama of everyday objects, domestic interiors, and shifting spatial relationships through painting.”  The exhibition was incredibly well received by gallery directors/curators and the general public alike for “offering a dynamic dialogue on seeing and making-on how visual experience is translated, filtered, and transformed.” -Tregony Contemporary