Dumah Morgan paints live concerts and nature with bold brushstrokes, vivid color
Whether it’s listening to the mellow beats of a Grateful Dead song, the rocking rhythms of a Marvin King Revue concert, or the bluegrass sounds of a Billy Strings performance, multi-dimensional artist Dumah Morgan believes music is medicine.
“It’s kind of therapeutic in a lot of ways. You can tune out everything that’s going on in your life and the world and focus on one thing,” he says.
Passionate about what he calls the Upstate’s “amazing talent,” Morgan’s diverse artistic roles have spanned from graphic design for bands’ promotional materials to working on Marcus King’s management team early in the local music legend’s career. He’s created murals, a Please Play Me Piano (called Weaver the Piano) for Judson Mill, and motion graphics of instruments for the Sigal Music Museum. He currently handles marketing and promotion for Poe Mill Music.
Yet Morgan–who started drawing in third grade and graduated with a fine arts degree from Lander University–is known for dynamically translating a concert into color and form, live-painting bands and solo musicians from start to finish as they play. Afterward, he secures their signatures on the back of the colorful acrylic-on-canvas pieces.
It’s a creative pursuit he started after attending the first Bonnaroo Festival in 2002. “I saw a couple of guys there doing it, and painting music looked interesting. I had always been into music and art, but not together,” he says, adding that he first live painted The Dirty Dozen Brass Band at The Handlebar.
Morgan has since live-painted at venues and outdoor festivals across the region, depicting local performers like the Aint Sisters and more nationally known musicians like Bob Weir, the founding member and rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead, and Grammy-winning blues musician Taj Mahal. A Marcus King fan commissioned him to paint one of King’s concerts at Red Rocks Amphitheater, fulfilling his dream of visiting the famed venue.
Concert to canvas
“I definitely get into it and paint to the beat of the music,” he says of his process. It includes setting up a French easel–often used for en plein air painting because of its portable, compact size–in an out-of-the-way location where both the band and the audience are visible.
“A lot of people come up and like to see the progress. I’ve been in small clubs with sold-out, packed [crowds], and it’s challenging to keep your space and not have people bump into you and get paint on their shirts,” he says, adding that a flashlight, held in his hand or strapped to the easel, helps with the challenge of painting in dim lighting.
Each completed piece conveys the reciprocal connection between a band and its audience through vivid color–orange is a favorite hue Morgan often uses as a base layer because it helps “the warmth” of the painting, he says–along with swirling brushstrokes and expressive marks.
“My whole style of painting came from that–the swirls, the energetic lines, and the lights–just to show motion and energy,” says Morgan, who infuses those same lively brushstrokes and bright colors into his landscape and en plein air paintings. They range from tree-lined roads on Edisto Island and haybale-filled fields to scenes of Greenville and views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“They have a whole different kind of energy,” he says, referencing an in-progress painting on an easel in his Artistry Gallery studio. The luminous large-scale canvas depicts a buffalo blocking a mountainous road in Yellowstone, a scene that played out during a trip Morgan took with his wife to the national park last summer.
“I enjoy painting great memories,” he adds. “You are capturing that moment in time.”
Dumah Morgan’s Greatest Hits
- Favorite genres: rock, early country and western, and bluegrass
- Favorite band: The Grateful Dead
- First concert: When he was 10 years old, his father took him to see Waylon Jennings and Jerry Reid. “I’ve been a live music fan ever since,” he says, adding that he most enjoys seeing bands who play original music.
- Most memorable music experience: “Grateful Dead shows for sure,” says Morgan, who has seen the band 14 times.
- Favorite music venue: Poe Mill Music
- If you had to bring one album to a desert island, what would it be? The Marcus King Band’s 2015 album Soul Insight: “It’s a great album, and I have tied-in memories of working with him,” Morgan says.
To see more of Morgan’s artwork, visit his studio at Artistry Gallery, 12 Andrews St., during the Metropolitan Arts Council’s First Fridays, go to dumahdesign.com/, or follow @dumahmorgan.
