Revery Alone Will Do
article by Autumn Toennis
Morgan Irons, photo by Ryan Parker
On a wintry evening in 2018, I was out walking with my boyfriend around the Downtown Bozeman Art Walk. It was cold, and we had ducked in and out of several businesses before we stepped inside Old Main Gallery. The first painting I saw held me still.
The piece was called “Days End,” though I didn’t know that at the time. It was simply a painting of dusk in a field, with a man and woman nearly silhouetted against it. Their bodies were turned away from us, but in towards each other. The woman’s cotton dress was caught by an invisible breeze, the last of the sun illuminating it.
It brought me to tears. It was one of those rare, visceral reactions that words, music, or art can cause in a person. I was looking at the work of an artist so utterly adept at conveying a feeling through paint that I had trouble finding words for it. I spent the better part of an hour drifting between the different paintings hung in that gallery. Wide pastorals depicting soft prairies and skies, workers in fields cultivating the land, and women against this backdrop: in profile, straight on, hands twisting a braid. Quiet, intensely personal moments.
That night was the opening of Morgan Iron’s first solo show, “To make a prairie.” When asked what her feelings had been on that evening, she said it had felt surreal to be showing work she had been alone with for so long. “Seeing people connect emotionally [to my work] is the greatest reward of all.”
Different than many other artists from Montana whose work follow the more “Western” tradition, Morgan’s oil paintings are reminiscent of the naturalist greats of the 19th century like Jules Breton, Winslow Homer, or Jean Francois-Millet. She is self-taught, and came to painting gradually; growing up, she drew frequently, but knew no working artists and had no idea art could become a career.
Hope of a New Field, 24˝ x 30˝ oil on linen.
Morgan was raised in Idaho and credits much of her work to being inspired by the open landscapes that surrounded her as a quiet, observant child— landscapes that she would follow in the coming years, beginning first in Alaska after college, and then Montana, a place, she thought, where she could develop her sense of self. After finishing her work at a fishing and bear-viewing camp, she left Alaska and found a 300 square foot cabin outside of Bozeman, Montana.
It was that move that would put her on track to discover painting.
“It wasn’t until I moved to Montana that I finally saw art galleries and met professional artists,” Morgan explained. She was working at the hospital in town using her psychology degree when she first encountered the art world in Bozeman. “It was really as if someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m sure you probably are aware, but we do apologize, we put you in the wrong life and here is the correct one.’ I left [the hospital] right around the time that I bought my first set of paints.”
Day's End, 30˝ x 30˝ oil on panel
Morgan would spend the next few years studying on her own and attending two short workshops with classical-style painters Jeremy Lipking and Joshua LaRock. During this literal starving artist period, she supported herself by doing small commissions and web design, and the occasional odd job. “It was extremely stressful, and I was very broke,” she says of that time. But it paid off when she was featured in Southwest Art Magazine’s “21 Under 31: Young Artists to Watch.” Soon after, Old Main Gallery in Bozeman contacted her for representation and, after many of her paintings sold immediately, offered her a solo show for the next year. That show would become “To make a prairie.” The title of the collection comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, one she says communicated the dream-like state of the world in which her paintings are created.
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.”
The collection was a success; it would ultimately kick start her career as a full time working artist, an incredible achievement and something nearly unheard of for a woman in her 20s. So much of this is due not only to her talent and hard work, but also to her raw ability to communicate emotion between her paintings and the viewer, much like how I felt that night of the opening. Many of her subjects face away from the audience, an intentional choice she makes so that they can see themselves in the figure and feel a common connection: “I believe that the human soul is essentially the same as it was when we were painting animals on cave walls. There are themes that will always strike a chord with us.”
In a time filled increasingly with more distractions, Morgan is dedicating herself to her work in a way that the modern world can sometimes make difficult. Her most recent studio is a cabin set on a few acres— slightly larger than the first she moved into when she came to Montana— that backs right up against National Forest land. So much of the calm and authenticity that her work evokes is a direct effect of her decision to live in this semi-isolation, in a place where she is able to hear herself think, and create. “When you give your brain a break from the constant stimulation we have at our fingertips, it makes things, gets ideas. It’s outrageously interesting. To help myself, I don’t have TV, my internet is too slow for streaming, and I delete distracting apps on my phone while I’m working.”
Braid, 16˝ x 20˝ oil on linen
When asked what it feels like to look back on everything she has achieved thus far in her career, she speaks of an overwhelming amount of gratitude, but feels driven to keep pushing herself farther, to keep learning more. Through her body of work, which continues to grow and expand (she is currently working on her second solo show), Morgan’s painting remains, at its core, very intimate. “My hope is that I can find a way to communicate deeply personal feelings and struggles in a way that is relatable,” she said. “I might have read this somewhere, but I’ve heard or thought that art is a way of reaching a hand out and saying, ‘I’m here, and this is how it feels to me. Does it feel this way to you too?’”
To learn more about Morgan’s work, visit her website morganirons.com, or follow her on Instagram @morganirons. Works of hers are available through Old Main Gallery in Bozeman, Montana.