Morris Graves was born in Fox Valley, Oregon in 1910 and traveled extensively throughout the United States and abroad in China, Japan, and the Philippines as a merchant sailor. As an artist, he was largely self-taught but gained repute through prizes, solo exhibitions, and his involvement with the Federal Art Project. In 1936, he received his first solo show at the Seattle Art Museum, and in the early 1940s, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a significant number of his paintings for its collection. Graves' sensitive representations of birds, flowers, snakes, and moons illustrate the artist's interest in nature and East Asian religions. After his death in 2001, Graves' house became the home of the Morris Graves Foundation, a private retreat for artists and art scholars.
