33 Tom and Mary Morris with two paintings by Bruce Bowman in Tom’s office. Opposite: “Capri Harbor” by Patsy Howell. Morris thinks there’s a deep spiritual need for beauty and considers the need among the four dimensions of the human experience he explores in his book, “If Aristotle Ran General Motors.” “I grew up deprived of any normal satisfaction of that need,” he says. “As soon as I could, at the age of 12, I became a musician, because that’s a form of beauty.” Morris defines that spark in two ways. “It’s a color experience that has an emotional impact right away,” he says. Referencing a Patsy Howell painting of a Capri canal scene hanging in his foyer for the last 15 years, he says he’ll have a wow experience in front of the painting at least three days a week. “It never gets old. I’ll just be running downstairs to do some-thing or to go to the gym to work out and I’ll just all of a sudden stop at the bottom of the stairs. It’s got some really vibrant colors in it. They just shoot right through me,” Morris says. The red boat painting represents stimulation, excitement, spirit lifting and at other times calm and deep peace. “It’s like almost whatever I need, somehow it’s going to spark that emotional attitude shift that’s just appropriate for the moment,” Morris says. “That one is my big exclamation point. It’s just like having a therapist waiting for me in the entryway that has just the right word when I need it,” he says. The Morrises lean toward bright colors like Howell’s. They also collect the work of Sally Sutton, Kyle Highsmith, Bruce Bowman and Chip Hemingway. Paint surface, color and light stimulate visual rods and cones, Morris says. In his inner sanctum, he hung two pieces by Bowman. One is a nocturnal portrait of Wilmington’s lost Bijou Theatre. The other, a darker subject, depicts a bottle of absinthe and a candle. “What it’s all about is light and color. All that stuff kind of lights me up,” he says. “I enjoy turning to look at these things for a few seconds, then I get back to work.” An innocuous New Orleans streetscape inspired the Morris collection. “We were in Chapel Hill,” Morris says. “This is when we were undergraduates before we were married, 41 years ago.” He recalls seeing the painting in a little gallery on Franklin Street. “I said, ‘Wow that’s really cool.’ It’s a carriage going down the street and some New Orleans’ lamps — a really quirky looking watercolor,” he says. It was unheard of at the time for a young woman to purchase a $25 painting for a boyfriend, yet Mary remembered Tom’s reac-tion and purchased the painting on layaway, paying $5 a week. Even though Mary was pursuing a degree as a dental hygienist, her husband says she’s always been a very creative person. Working as a hygienist while Tom attended grad school at Yale, Mary finally www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
December 2104
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