The United Gas Pipe Line Company Collection

UGPL 0102 Morehouse, William, Sonoma Landscape, acrylic on canvas, 4′ x 8′, 1976

William Morehouse (1929- )

Written in 1976 for the catalog and reproduced as printed, with spelling corrected. Not current.

William Morehouse is a renowned northern California artist whose work derives from influences ranging from Japan to Spain. Essentially a painter, Morehouse has worked in three-dimensional form—in urethane foam and fiberglass, cast plaster, and sewn, fitted, and painted canvas—but his reputation as a major Bay Area figure derives from his grandly scaled, architectonic canvases.

Morehouse attended the San Francisco Art Institute when its principal teachers included Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Clay Spohn, Mark Rothko, and Elmer Bischoff. He has since become an influential teacher and leader in the art community, at the Art Institute and Sonoma State College, where he now directs the Department of Art.

In 1955 Morehouse was included by James Johnson Sweeney in the Younger American Painters exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. His first one-man show was at the Telegraph Hill Gallery, San Francisco, during the same year; after a one-man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Morehouse exhibited annually at the John Bolles Gallery. His urethane sculpture was included in Peter Selz’ highly influential “Funk” exhibition at the University of California in Berkeley, 1967.

Morehouse has traveled and worked in Mexico, Spain, and the South Pacific. He now lives and works in Bodega, California.

From The Art Collection of United Gas Pipe Line Company (Houston, 1976), curated by Susan Rush.