Morris Bear Squire is an individual who has traversed many different worlds, both literally and figuratively, during his lifetime. He is the rare person who has excelled in the artistic arena, as well as in the academic and professional communities. He is not only a highly skilled and internationally recognized
artist, but a pioneer in Developmental Child Psychology. Squire has spent considerable time abroad while developing his professional career, and his extensive
traveling has had a major influence on his unique
artwork.
In the early 1920's, Squire was born on a kitchen table in a basement on Jackson Blvd., in the heart of
Chicago's old West Side. He was the first child of immigrants who survived internment camps in Baku, Azerbaijan, where many undesirables (e.g. Jews and Asians) were detained. Squire was conceived while his parents were imprisoned, and after being rescued from the camps they immigrated to "the promising land of golden opportunities" along with many other European refugees. From these harsh beginnings, a versatile
artist emerged decades later.
When he was 18, Squire was drafted into the
United States Air Force and served for three
years in the Air Corps in the South Pacific theater. He was stationed in Guam, Saipan and
Iwo Jima, and his experiences there left an indelible mark in his life. After spending some
time in
Japan after the end of
WW2, his interest in Asian traditions and culture flourished.
Meeting an old woman in Guam who had the largest family on the island (
15 children and
50 grandchildren) made a deep impression on him. It is interesting to note how significant
and important family traditions were to become to him later in life as he developed as an
artist.
Inspired by his mother and aunt, who had established a Jewish
Orthodox nursing home
when he was a teenager, Squire began working as a
counselor for students while he was a
psychology undergraduate at the University of Illinois after the war. Eventually he
graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and Biology. He then began to
direct his attention specifically toward
Child Psychology, eventually earning a Master's
Degree at the
University of Chicago.
As Squire started to develop his career as a health care professional, he also began honing
his administrative and
entrepreneurial skills. He started working in the real estate field and
consciously tried to achieve a harmonious balance between social work and his growing
commercial acumen. In 1958, he built
Forest Psychiatric Hospital on the outskirts of
Chicago and later established the
Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, comprising
four campuses in Chicago,
Hawaii,
Missouri and
North Carolina. He owned this 180-bed
hospital for over 40 years and it became one of the focal points of his professional life.
Over the course of his career in the mental health field Squire also founded a general
hospital in Missouri in the early 1960s, established four day schools, three preschools,
three independent living facilities, seven hospitals, the first
methadone center in a
private hospital, two insurance companies and Wonder Lake State Bank. While
maintaining a productive pace in the commercial arena, Squire also lectured routinely on
family and group therapy in over 30 countries. He also wrote two books on current
psychiatric practices and administrative psychiatry, produced a weekly radio program
broadcast weekly on 250 radio stations, and wrote a column, ("Focus on Mental Health")
which was published in over 100 newspapers.
In addition to finding
formidable success in his chosen field, Squire has consistently
created and exhibited artwork throughout his life. In fact, his artwork has been the
emotional core of his approach to all aspects of his life, and his artistic activity has
informed and framed everything he has done, be it professional, commercial or personal.
The wellspring of Squire's life is first and foremost artistic and creative.
Well over 30 years ago, Squire began to carve and paint stones late at night in an attempt
to channel some of his surplus energy into something that had personal meaning. He
started to paint small canvases in an
impressionistic fashion and soon an earnest interest in
the visual arts began to take shape. Being socially oriented and predisposed to working
with other people, he formed an artists collective in the rural Midwest in 1978. He set up
an elaborate
lithography studio in Wonder Lake, Illinois and invited artists from all over
the world to come and collaborate in making prints on paper. This was the beginning of
Squire's
love affair with handmade
paper.
The artists participating in his lithography salon experimented widely with different
materials, constructing various kinds of papers on which to print artwork. Inspired, Squire
developed his own formula and technique for using
cotton fiber. He made his source
material from scratch and dyed the paper pulp before applying the colors by hand, much
like a painter might use a brush loaded with
oil paint. This material was thick and weighty
and the end result was a true synthesis between painting and sculpture. His cotton fiber
series, sometimes reaching over 8 by 4 feet and 1/2 inches in relief, could be seen as
three-dimensional paintings because he enhanced the physical and tactile quality of the
material by using
color to contrast and highlight the contours.
Eager to try his hand at different materials and media, in 1958 Squire began exploring
metal sculpture as a means of expressing his ideas. Often constructing pieces 9 feet in
diameter, he would weld and bend different shapes together, painting the surfaces and
sometimes bringing pieces into an auto body shop to have enamel finishes baked onto
them. He also made
ceramics during this period and taught himself
watercolor, all in an
effort to develop fluency in various materials and techniques.
Squire's central compositional technique is to establish a foreground, subject and
background, producing a multi-layered effect that powerfully draws the viewer into the
work. Since he usually concentrates on
portraiture, either single figures or small groups,
this manner of constructing the foundation of a painting is very effective in focusing
attention on specific areas of the composition. Another of Squire's core compositional
concerns is the use of perspective. He carefully structures his compositions to attract the
viewer's eye toward the area of a painting that he feels is significant. Lines are sketched in,
altered and shifted to produce the most dramatic effect possible.
Before producing his current
lacquerware series 3 years ago, Squire was also deeply
involved in
photography, experimenting with creating a
pastiche effect by combining
different images. After completing his first substantial series of large oil canvases in the
early 70s, Squire recognized the artistic possibilities in appropriating photographic images,
along with generating his own, and contrasting them to convey specific ideas. For the
lacquerware compositions, he began scanning and then manipulating them electronically in
the computer by using complex graphic programs such as
Adobe Photoshop,
Corel Draw and
Freehand. The resulting images were used as the guide and
blueprint for his extensive
ongoing lacquerware body of work.
While he was concerned with artistic techniques, the emotion behind his work is the most
important element in his paintings. For example, his most recent body of work, the
lacquerware paintings, contains several sub-themes focused around specific topics that are
most meaningful to him. There are paintings of his family, close friends, children, scenes
from
Vietnam, the
Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Parade, the
circus, the
Bible and visions of the
Gothic period.
A unifying concept that runs through most of these series is the ideas of the "
gold mask".
In the gold mask paintings Squire draws upon his extensive knowledge and experience in
psychology and psychiatry to share his ideas about how people express themselves to
others. He uses a gold mask as a potent symbol of how a person illuminates their emotions
from within - their attempt to present the outside world with a glowing version of
themselves. In reality,
people are complex creatures and they often meld their actual
self-projection with their interpretation of others' perception of who they might be. People
are never really seen in the manner in which they are consciously attempting to present
themselves. The notion of the gold mask is
a visual metaphor for the
discrepancies
between the real and the imagined.
Squire's inspiration for the gold mask series comes partly from
Russian Icon paintings,
with their focus on portraiture and liberal use of
gold leaf. They usually portrayed well
known
fairy tale characters or important historical figures, honoring those who were held
in high esteem. Another source of inspiration for this lacquerware series was the use of
lacquer as a preservative in ancient
Chinese temples. To protect temple artwork against
humidity and harsh environmental conditions, artists use lacquer techniques to make the
paintings more durable.
The intersection of dualities is a consistent theme in all of Morris Bear Squire's artwork.
For instance, he often combines traditional lacquer techniques with computer-generated
imagery, contrasting ancient and time-honored subjects with a
contemporary pop
sensibility. Perhaps most importantly, in his artwork he illustrates the interplay between
the person he is portraying and his own projection of that person or who he perceives that
person to be. This exciting dynamic between his subject and himself informs all of his
artwork, infusing it with genuine meaning and
heartfelt expression. Squire, in effect, gives
himself away when he creates a portrait of a person's
inner self, losing himself in the
process and becoming one with his subject. The vital combination of Squire's powerful
humanism and his highly developed artistic talent results in his artwork that is both
innovative and
life affirming.
sources: Morris Bear Squire, Bradford Edwards, and myself.