Jelene Morris:

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Jelene Morris

• world of childlike characters

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Jelene started developing her "cartoony"
child-like style around the age of 10, and
realized that, "Hey, art is fun! This is what I
want to do when I grow up!".
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Later on, she started distorting her shapes and
figures even more. She paints on whatever she can
get her hands on ceramics, canvas, paper,
plastic, and wood. Jelene has just started
showing her work in various galleries and even on
a television show!
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Hello. My name is Jelene Morris and I am a
professional artist from Columbia, SC, currently
living in Kansas City, Missouri. I remember the
first time I wanted to become an artist when I
grew up, was at my 5 year old birthday party,
with Mr. Knozit on tv. Mr. Knozit went around and
asked the children what they wanted to be when
they grew up, I wanted to say that I wanted to be
an artist, but I was embarassed, so I said I
wanted to be Wonder Woman instead. Having the
thought of becoming an artist though, only made
me want to draw all the time. I was fascinated
with Snoopy and Garfield in the 80's. Trying to
draw them.. other characters as well.
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In high school, I got art honors when I
graduated, and got to wear the rainbow tassle on
my gown. In college, I majored in studio art,
against the will of my parents, who wanted me to
become a teacher. I went to grad school for a
bit, but got tired of school, and didn't
finish... I started doing my own art thing,
creating art on my own and showing it at the
Morris Gallery in my town and selling it to
different people. I soon discovered the world of
the internet, and started my own business with
jelene.com in 1998.
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My work is based on the world of childlike
characters and a lot of bright colors. Almost too
much color. My Tickles the goldfish character is
usually in my work. I used to have a real fish
named Tickles, which inspired me. His girlfriend,
Baby Dumpling is also involved in the paintings
and is the peach goldfish with the pink pearls.
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I started a small series of work which I called
"minipops" and have other paintings such as the
nightmare series, which is more abstracted. I
take some varieties of my dreams and twist them
into a silly story and make the nightmare
paintings. The minipops are just simple forms of
my ideas brought to life on a small canvas.
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I've worked in all sorts of art mediums, from
throwing clay to making sculptures out of wood..
but right now my focus is on painting. I paint
mostly on handmade canvases, and on thick
varieties of paper.
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She considers her work a combination of Pop Art
and Cartoons, forming the name "Poptoon". Her
signature character is Tickles Goldfish and he
lives in the world Poptoonville with his friends
Baby Dumpling, Pokey the snail, Tommie Tooth and
Blue Dog. Her darker style of work she refers to
as the "Nightmare series".
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It's kind of fun to imagine. Fun to imagine one
of my crazy paintings in a huge art museum. It's
also neat to see how it would look large,
especially next to women wearing 80's style
dresses, lol.
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Compare/ContrastPicasso/ Morris
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Student Work
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