I’m Morgan Underwood

I paint fighters.

I am an oil painter with a background in classical oil painting based out of Grandview, TX. I work from a variety of subject matter including Boxing, MMA, UFC, Roller Derby, Women’s Rugby, movie and video stills and other photographs.

I find and exaggerate the strange and often dichotomous things that I see: romance, melodrama, sadness, happiness, anger, labor, and pleasure. Like my subjects I work violently, splashing paint over the canvas in a harsh, messy strokes. My work exaggerates the musculature and the physicality of my subjects. Sexual dimorphism between men and women is reduced. I simplify the formal components of the work to those most necessary to produce emotion.

The athletic physicality of sport, sensuality and power of the figures, and and the rough quality of the application of paint underscores the haphazard, messy nature of human connection.

The paintings are large to force you to view them. I want people to form a relationship with my work and be witness to an uncomfortable, and un-ignorable intimacy.