Jesse Morsberger Paints Digital Memory into Oil on Canvas
Jesse Morsberger, a painter from Brooklyn, transforms the remnants of 1990s and 2000s digital culture into oil artworks, viewing video games, anime, manga, and the early internet as significant spaces where friendships and identities were formed, rather than mere nostalgic icons. Everyday items like a glowing phone, a game console, or a monitor illuminating a room gain emotional depth within typical domestic settings. For Morsberger, oil paint extends the fleeting nature of digital images, granting them a tangible presence. Influenced by a musical father and an oil painter grandfather, along with early comic sessions at home, his artistic vocabulary expanded through middle school manga. His recent work, depicting a cat drinking from a glass, showcases his goal of capturing familiar subjects with bold brushwork. Morsberger engages in multiple paintings at once, allowing the creative process to shape each piece organically, with only about ten percent reaching completion.
Key facts
- Jesse Morsberger is a painter based in Brooklyn.
- His work focuses on experiences shared by a generation that came of age during the 1990s and 2000s.
- Video games, anime, manga, and the early internet are formative references in his practice, not merely nostalgic symbols.
- He grew up surrounded by artists, with a musician father and an oil painter grandfather.
- Early comic-strip collaborations with his father drew on Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts.
- He discovered manga in middle school, expanding his approach to storytelling and composition.
- Philip Guston and David Park are cited as important influences for treating ordinary life as worthy subject matter.
- A recent oil painting of a cat drinking water from a glass on a kitchen counter is one he feels pleased with.
- He typically works on several paintings at once and does not use preliminary sketches.
- By his own estimate, perhaps one out of every ten paintings truly comes together.
Entities
Artists
- Jesse Morsberger
- Philip Guston
- David Park
- Bill Watterson
- Charles M. Schulz
Institutions
- AATONAU
Locations
- Brooklyn
- United States
Sources
- AATONAU —