by Brian Bourassa
Anthony Morrison was born in Chicago, but raised in the Bay Area. As an only child he relied on the company of his two cousins. “We often watched Saturday morning TV and old movies to deal with our boredom,” he said. “When I was growing up I didn't have many friends, so watching TV with my cousins was a way to deal with my loneliness.” Anthony also watched most of the James Bond movies as a young adult. “I got a lot of inspiration from 007, because he traveled around the world to interesting places trying to capture colorful criminals”. He also enjoyed the early stop-motion pictures of Ray Harryhausen. Among his favorites are Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Clash of the Titans. “I learned how to treat people how they wanted to be treated by watching these films and they offered a great escape into s fantasy world’. He also found that movies and television provided a buffer from the racial and religious stigma enforced by his mother. “She was very conservative” Anthony stated. It was during this time that he started drawing and decided to take a figure drawing class at the local community college. Those classes gave him passion to draw.
Anthony has been going to Hospitality House’s Community Art Program since 2013. He has been busy exploring his favorite theme of social injustice with elaborate pen and ink drawings. Not limiting himself to drawing, he also incorporates words and short essays on his themes which become an extension of the drawings themselves. It's often hard to decipher what came first, the words or the drawings. Anthony is very clear when he states that "Each is essential to one another.”
Currently he is working on and expanding his series of short graphic novels. He has self-published “Kiwi, Sweat and Mollie Brown” and “Love Walks In”. All are available on Kindle at Amazon.com. Anthony also has been printing post cards with his favorite images for sale through the Community Art Center. His last collaboration with Brian Bourassa is a post card from the “Love Walks In Series” and is a tribute to the drive-in movies. It’s called “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. The post cards are currently in production and will be available in June.
