Morgan Auten is an abstract painter and elementary art teacher from northeast Georgia. She is an art educator with 12 years experience under her belt. Art education is not just a means to an end for Morgan, but also a passion. She loves teaching creativity to kids and showing them all that they are capable of. Morgan’s work is bold, calming, thoughtful, filled with intention, and beauty. Through her own joyful take on color and shape, she explores the intersections between individuality and womanhood, and power and patriarchy. Currently, Morgan resides in Gainesville, Ga with her partner Joshua and twin children.

Artist Statement:

My work expresses the sacrifices made when struggling between the artistic self and the self that exists outside of the studio. As a woman, wife, teacher, I am reduced to fit into certain molds and must cull elements of myself. There are parts of my life that I sacrifice in order to create. Similarly sacrifices occur to complete artwork, layers sacrificed to find compositional conclusion, colors offered up and covered over in the name of balance. The sacrifices that are made in my work bring forth a language of light, color, edges, weight and shape. All of these come together to create a dialog that is arresting to the viewer. These sacrifices result in color fields of expressive geometric abstraction that are both powerful and delicate.There is always something under the surface in my paintings, something that makes the viewer pause over the subtleties and consider what has been sacrificed.