Featured Artists
FEBRUARY 2025
Dennis Morton
Artist's Statement
Dennis Morton’s initial work in New England was as a portrait artist. He began his formal training as an apprentice under Richard Whitney in 1973. He worked on portraits of the Secretary of the Navy James Webb, Cardinal Medeiros and other high-profile portraits. In 1988 Morton was honored by Governor John Sununu at the New Hampshire State House where twenty-five of his paintings were exhibited for two weeks.
Moving to Hawaii in 1991, he continued to receive commissions in portrait painting. He painted portraits of three circuit judges, Father Damien for the catholic church in Molokai, William Waddell the last Buffalo Soldier, John Lydgate and family in Kauai, and Father Mackey of Chaminade. He was also fortunate to paint Glen Campbell and family.
In 2012 he was commissioned to paint Patty Hastie, George Clooney’s wife in the movie “The Descendants”. The portrait of Patty ended up on the cutting room floor. The director Alex Payne did a follow up entitled “Real Descendants” in which he interviewed John Morgan the head of Kááawa’ Valley along with others about the Hawaiian Alli and merging with wealthy foreigners. Alex sent Cammy Spenser from Fox in Los Angeles to John Morgan’s office where she saw the painting of Púu Ohulehule. She decided to show the painting morphing into reality to start her documentary.
Dennis has sold paintings to Richard Chamberlain, John Travolta and Glen Campbell. Some of his landscapes have been sold to wealthy clients on Óahu and have been in the background of at least six episodes of Hawaii Five O. In the mid-90s he began aggressively pursuing his interest and talents in landscape painting. Many of his pieces reflect the area of Windward Óahu and Kauai. Thru the years he moved back and forth from New England and Hawaii painting many studies and paintings in Plein Air. He refers to his style as visual impressionism, which can be explained in Richard Whitney’s book “Painting the Visual Impression" whereby it is a combination of classical realism and impressionist color notes.
Dennis is now painting Florida landscapes and is continuing to paint portraits & landscapes.
He now resides in Fort Myers and is teaching art classes at The Cape Coral Art League and private classes.
For more info on him you may visit his website: dennismorton@hawaii.com or imaginegallery@together.net
Dennis’s phone number is 603-235-2777 regarding classes or commissioned artwork.
The Interview
by Dee J. Stevenson
NANCY THOMPSON
1. What drew/draws you to CCAL & how long have you been a CCAL member? After Hurricane Ian, the CCAL had no secretary because Kim lost her home. Miriam texted me asking if I wanted a job and thought it would be a cake walk for me after my last job. So I tried it, really like what I’m doing as well as the members at the CAAL. So I’ve been with CCAL approximately 18 months.
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2. How did you first become interested in ART as a profession? - College or other. I was never an artist.. I worked from a very young age at Kmart Corporation and worked my way up to a Senior IT Manger. I had 60 people in India and 3 heads onshore. We supported executives, merchants, field, Logistic and financial people on all reporting needs. Previously I worked with IT to develop a web based system that provided the functionality to slice and dice their data and download to their own desktop.
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3. How long have you been an artist? I did take one art class with Pat St. Onge and I surprised myself and did well. We painted with acrylics on a bag I take to the gym, paint pouring, scratch board and a collage.
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4. What's been your most successful venue? CCAL, online sales, longevity? My most successful was working for Kmart / Sears Holdings. I was there 42 years, when I first moved to FL I worked from home, but shortly after a new CIO decided he didn’t want to pay a support team and felt the developers could support their own work. Our whole team was let go, but we got the last severance package available. Supporting was a challenge for the developers because good processes were not always followed, resulting in applications breaking and delays in getting issues resolved.
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5. What art experience do you prefer more recently? Acrylics
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6. What do YOU consider has been your most significant contribution to CCAL? Working in the office at CCAL and automating processes to make it easier and reduce errors.
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7. What do YOU like/enjoy most about CCAL? Working on Wednesdays during Open Painting. Great group of people. Enjoy the receptions and the theme of the month, i.e. Let’s go Green.
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8. What has been YOUR most (important to you) change within CCAL? Working 2 days a week instead of 1 like last year. This has allowed me to get to know people better.
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9. How do you grade/rate this? Partial success
Overall success; Partial success; On-going activities; Partial disappointment; Totally irrelevant; Complete failure
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10. How do YOU, personally overcome negativities - negative events/actions by others? Avoid discussions about politics or religion and if they come up, change the subject.
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10. What are YOUR special hopes, plans, suggestions for the continued growth & financial viability of CCAL? To Continue working at CCAL, learning more processes that I can do to help Carmen. Applying automation where applicable. Also hope we make changes i.e. night time classes, look for ways to reduce expenses.