Ike E. Morgan was born 1958 in Rockdale TX. 

We first met Ike Morgan in 1992.  We had seen his work at a Houston gallery and known of his work for a number of years, so we set out to meet the Texas artist, Ike Morgan and get to know his work even more.

 At that time, Ike was living in the Austin State Hospital, and I’ll always remember meeting him on the hospital lawn under the big old oak trees as the hospital accepted its first patient for care in 1861.  Ike was a natural.  He was a solid example of cool cat.  His personal style is deep in the late 1970’s and his taste for music the same era.  Ike was handed the challenge of mental illness, but it never has defined him.  Only Ike his sweet self and his artistic talent has defined Ike.

Ike resided in the Austin State Hospital for 25 years and it would have been less had he not been a loving individual. 

When we met Ike, he had two social aids who were totally on his side.  They saw in Ike his big heart, immense talent, and sharp wit.
David and Diana protected Ike as he healed.  They worked the system to make sure he did not leave the hospital without the life skills he would need and the tools for life most of us take for granted.David and Diana truly cared for Ike and when he left the hospital for independent living with a roommate, they continued to visit him up until David’s passing and Ike eventually moving from the Austin area.

While in the Austin State Hospital, as Ike recovered, he turned to the hospital’s rolling library as reference material for paintings.  Ike has used painting as his coping mechanism and private language for socializing. His favorite reference has always been, the Book of Presidents. 
Ike claims he has loved historic portraiture as far back as his teenage years while sitting at the back of history class, but Ike’s strongest period of interest in Washington is from George’s face on the cash Ike had in the Austin State Hospital. Those dollars bought him delivered pizza and hot wings that were valuable in the institutional setting.
 
In between the favored presidents, Ike is also fond of Mona Lisa, various birds, subjects of music favorites from his record collection including Rick James and the Emotions, beloved subjects from this favorite vintage western sitcoms, friends as memories, and the rare self-portrait. 

Ike works through a series of paintings based upon subject and his art supplies on hand. A series will be anywhere from 3 to 20 plus portraits of various past presidents, Mona Lisa, or any other subject he has in his mind at the moment the first layer goes down. He begins with sketching each piece in the series with ink pens, then layers individual colors of paint on each piece and eventually finishes all pieces at the same time after the final layer of color.

Ike lived independently with a roommate until 2020, when his longtime friend/roommate passed away and covid changed how he socially engaged.  Ike came to need assistance and currently lives in a nursing facility where he continues to make art every day. 

Ike’s life as not been easy, but a life he knows and has mastered by using his talent for drawing and painting to occupy time and more importantly as a survival mechanism.

He’s goal in painting is to continue his practice of perfecting each series.  His personal language seems to be in color, design, and layers upon layers which give him faith in hope.  His work reflects where his mind and heart were at the moment of making art and is shared with the public through a dedication to the healing of the creative spirit.

Ike E. Morgan’s artwork has been featured in exhibits across the South from the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, the JP Bryan Museum in Galveston, the Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, and the African American Museum in Dallas.
Ike’s work is also included in the collection at Jean Dubuffet’s Collection l’art brut in Lausanne, Switzerland ,the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, the Pompidou Museum in Paris, the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas in Austin and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.