Bart Morse

Bart Morse a longtime University of Arizona art professor and an accomplished watercolor painter has died. He was 71. He died Tuesday at his home in Newberg, OR after a long battle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). Bart Jennings Morse was born in Sandy, Utah in 1938, along with his fraternal twin Bert, to Helen Dee Labrum and Jennings Bryan Morse. Raised in a log cabin on the family farm, Morse saw education as a way to leave his rural roots. As a youngster, he was an avid reader and had a potent visual memory. He was introduced to abstract expressionism by his Jordan High School art teacher Don Olsen, who had in turn studied with Hans Hofmann in New York. Morse's mature style was figurative and largely landscape-based, but also distinctive in its highly personal use of color, surface, and imagery. He went on to earn a BS from BYU, and his MFA in painting from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1964. He served in the Army Reserve. He married Leslie Jean Frey in 1960 in the Salt Lake Temple and they were the parents of five children. The family settled in Tucson in 1970 when Morse took an assistant professor position at UA. Over the years he managed the painting and printmaking departments, overhauling and adding several large presses for students; he also undertook scholarly research on Aboriginal art in Australia and European watercolorists before retiring in 2002. Morse enjoyed teaching and encouraged students to make the most of their university resources, particularly the library. He considered Bruce McGrew and Doug Denniston to be influential local colleagues who shared his passion for watercolor. Morse's work is in numerous public and private collections including The University of Arizona Art Museum and the Tucson Museum of Art. He was shown in over 60 individual and group shows during his career. An enthusiastic and energetic outdoorsman, Morse loved backpacking, hunting, and fishing, and the photographs and drawings that he made on these outings became source material for his varied artistic output, which included collage, printmaking, and oil painting. He was particularly fond of the remote geography of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah and also of the petroglyphs and pictographs made by the Fremont and Anasazi. Throughout the 1990s Morse made seven trips as the interpretive artist with the National Forest Service's archaeological documentation program 'Passport in Time.' Morse is survived by his wife, Leslie; daughters, Maury, Brooke and Magen; sons, Marc and Aaron; his brother, Bert Morse; and seven grandchildren. A Memorial Service is scheduled for Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at Lake Hills Memorial Mortuary Cemetery in Sandy, UT. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made to the local food bank or curepsp.org.