George Morant - An Australian Original
Capital Times, 29th September 2004
The subject matter is just a vehicle for painting...I'm reacting to what I see. You've got to feel about something intimately to do it justice, especially politcal work.
Justice is high on Morant's agenda. His paintings are a reaction to the things he has seen since hitting the road at 14. His work has not always met with approval.
There are still many people who object to my paintings, but I'm 70 now, I've got a pretty thick skin and I've been political since I could talk.
Sue Smith - The Courier Mail - 24th July 1999
Although artist George Morant is no relation to "Breaker" Morant, he does share with his famous namesake a profound affinity with the bush and an antagonistic attitude to oppressive authority.
When Morant talks about remote places , you're transported back into a tough, frontier Australia , where the red ochre landscape was vast and inspiring, but life for many was isolated and sometimes cruel.
Morant's art reflects both the beauty and brutality of these unforgiving places.
Sue Smith, 2001 - The Courier Mail - 20th May 2001
And the work of George Morant...is hauntingly expressive of the powerful spiritual and historical forces that for them fill the Australian landscape. Their work confronts the past, and addresses present issues of reconciliation and national identity.
For all these artists, landscape is created in our minds - the meaning we see in the land is through the metaphors we make of it. And the artists here offer us a diversity of beguiling agendas, attitudes and ideas about the dialectic relationship of all living things with their environment.
In the end, we must conclude that no absolute truth can be stated about landscape, nor can a single metaphor adequately encompass it. The conundrum of landscape painting is that it perhaps tells us more about ourselves than it tells us about the world - it is indeed a self-portrait that we all may paint.
Des Partridge - The Sun - 1981
Some paintings just disappear without a trace in the second floor gallery of the Brisbane Community Arts Centre.
The oversized room with its endless metres of white wall just swallows them up.
Not so the oils of George Morant whose exhibition has opened there.
Outsized, dramatic, glowing with sombre jewel colour they need all the space the can get.
Des Houghton - The Sunday Sun - 30th August 1981
With a flamboyant stroke of his brush, bush artist George Morant has painted himself into top Australian galleries.
His work, of course, has all to do with it. It is distinctly anti-establishment and anti-church. But not, he says, anti-christ. A persons religion is his own business. "It is only organised religion I am critical of. Millions of dollars are poured into ornate constructions, ornaments and other regalia"
Dr. Gertrude Langer - The Courier Mail - 20th October 1982
This time he aims his satire at sport as a metaphor for human competitiveness. Some of the best paintings deal, most un-sentimentally, with the institutions of bethrothal and marriage feast.
Although Morant leaves us in no certainty about his disillusionment with the human race, the paintings themselves are not negative.
Michael Richards - The Courier Mail - 1988
Political satire has rarely been prominent in Australian art.
George Morant revitalises the form with his exhibitions of 18 paintings at Metro Arts.
Morant is one of the great characters of Australian Art.
Morant's current show is a personal statement on the bicentennial. His paintings and his messages are not for the faint hearted. He ruthlessly sataries injustice and hypocrist in Australian society, beginning with the First Fleet.
Jeffrey Makin - The Sun - 14th September 1977
In many ways the paintings are as muscular and athletic as Morant is, and reflect the colour and rugged individuality that 15 years as an opal digger and dealer at Lightning Ridge produces.
Gutsy is the keyword...There are aspects of Morant that immediately bring to mind American social realist Ben Shawn and locally, Noel Counihan.
Frederic Rogers - Brisbane - 30th August 1981
Here is an artist with an eye for strong colour, and an approach which suggests a satiric, not to say sardonic, temprement.
This strongly subjective theme is underlined by chracteristic distortion of figures - a suggestion perhaps, that Mr Morant is not favourably impressed with his subjects.
Anne Latrielle - The Age - 1976
George Morant's large canvasses glow with vivid, jewel-like colours...red, bue, green, gold and deep purple.
The experts would, perhaps, describe his work as abstract expressionism. George says he paints "things that I've seen or that interest me"
Thread, 2004 - George Morant - An Australian Original - Thread
The exhibition, which will be officially opened by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark will only run for 3 weeks. “This is a rare and very limited opportunity to see the works of an extremely interesting and powerful painter”, says The Dowse Director, Tim Walker.
I knew they would cause real excitement among New Zealand audiences”.“I urge people to make the most of this rare opportunity to see these powerfully, unforgettable paintings. The issues Morant deals with and his style of bold, colourful narrative painting have certain synergies with a number of New Zealand painters”.
Sue Smith, 1999 - Trackers and Troopers George Morant - Graphico Topico
Still there are many who "do" appreciate his work, and see him as a free spirit unafraid to tackle important, hard issues. Morant's dealer, Michel Sourgnes, says above all, Morant is "his own man". "I think he (Morant) paints better than Nolan," opines Sourgnes. "While Nolan paints what I call 'reassuring myths' about Australian society, he (Morant) is depicting the disturbing reality."