A Local Artist's Success Story

Myke Morton doing better than ever

It is not an easy thing for most artists to make a full-time livelihood with their art, but local artist Myke Morton is one who has managed to do so. In the Mt. Washington Valley especially, most artists have had to work at other jobs in order to support themselves and their families, yet Morton has made a living from art alone for the past 15 years, What is the secret of her success?

Part of the answer lies in her own assessment: "It's been a good area for me, because the area is what I do." Having lived in the Mt. Washington Valley almost all her life, Morton is intimately familiar with the look and feel of the place. This intimacy informs her work. While she does not paint specific scenes, she distills and blends an emotional reaction to the area, which she says "is what everyone identifies with." In other words, she paints a synthesis of the local scene: not a single place, but every place—a rendering of an over-all impression of the natural landscape.

Morton's principal subject is nature, her larger landscapes painted in acrylics, her floral still-lifes in watercolors. She does accept commission work, of landscapes or of buildings, for which she is currently booked so far in advance. she says that to commission a piece for Christmas 1987 a customer would have to put in the request now.

"I sell a lot to tourists and second-home owners here," Morton notes, recognizing that one way people have of relating to a particular environment is through the art depicting that environment. She herself feels that she will be known and remembered principally for her winter scenes. These are her specialty. A Myke Morton winterscape bears the unmistakable stamp of her art: these are her colors, her forms, her trees and sky and snow, in shades of brown, blue, grey, white, combining the stripped aspect of winter with its particular luminescence.

With equal authority, she shows us winter in its surly aspect and in its pearly ethereality: the russets and sepias of dried foliage, the long shadows, the cool blue note that lurks in snow, the furred look of massed treetops, the grey edge of sky. These bear the Morton hallmark. Here is an art of the hand nourished by the observation of an eye that has gazed since childhood on the scenes she paints. A Morton landscape is as authentically New Hampshire as a poem by Robert Frost.

Self-taught both as an artist and as a business person, Morton attributes part of her success to the business acumen she has learned to develop over the years and to the long hours and hard work she puts into her painting career. Between the time she spends actually painting (some 30 to 35 hours per week) and the time she devotes to business concerns, she figures that almost all of her waking hours are given over to the job of being a full-time artist.

"But I love what I do and I enjoy sharing it," she says. This liking for people also contributes to Morton's success. "I like to have people drop in at the gallery while I'm working, whether or not they buy, and I'm always glad to answer questions," she notes.

On Sunday, Dec. 14, [1986], Morton [held] the grand opening of her new gallery by the covered bridge in Jackson. In this new location, the gallery will operate year 'round, one of several art galleries in the area to feature works by their owners.

Clearly an artist at the right time in the right place, Morton feels her work is improving all the time. Apparently, so do her customers; her biggest problem these days is keeping enough of her work on the gallery walls to reflect the full scope of her inventory—a problem most artists would envy.

Editor's Note: Myke Morton, who was born in 1941, passed away in April 2008. Her art can still be found for sale in the Valley and online.