Former inmate off to Florence to study painting
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — “This is my paint gear,” George Anthony Morton said, apologizing for splatters that only he could see on his black T-shirt. He had spent the afternoon at his easel, painting a portrait of someone he had asked to pose for him.
“This hasn’t gotten to the stage where it’s satisfactory yet,” he said, but he was upbeat — he had two more sessions with her. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to refine it.”.
Every artist has a story. Morton wants his to be about where he is going: the Florence Academy of Art, in Italy. He is to attend a six-week workshop there starting in July.
That is unusual. He applied and was accepted, and is the only student from the academy’s American branch, the Florence Academy of Art U.S., who will be going. But it is not as unusual as the part of his story that he does not want dominating the conversation, the part about where he has been, which is federal prison. He served nine years and six months of an 11-year sentence after pleading guilty to a drug charge in Missouri, where he grew up.
“All my 20s,” said Morton, 33, who now lives in Jersey City.
He was released three years ago and ordered to check in with a supervising officer regularly for 10 years. Last month, Judge Gary Fenner terminated the supervision requirement.
“Early termination of supervised release is fairly unusual,” said Harlan Protass, a Manhattan lawyer. “There typically has to be a very good reason for a judge to terminate a term of supervised release.”
Morton’s application to end his parole mentioned learning to paint in prison. It mentioned murals he painted in the officers’ mess halls in the two prisons where he did his time.
The application mentioned that in 2015, he began studying at the Florence Academy of Art U.S., in the Mana Arts complex here in Jersey City. In 2016, he won the school’s award for the best portrait of the year.
In February and March this year, he spent one day a week in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s copyist program, creating interpretation of masterpieces with his easel set up in galleries. In April, one of his paintings was in a gallery show in Sag Harbor, N.Y., in the Hamptons. The painting sold before the show opened.
Morton is well aware that when he completes his studies in December, he will be the first African American to graduate from the Florence Academy of Art U.S. “To be an artist, to be an American artist, to be an African American artist — I don’t take it lightly,” Morton said.
Morton dropped out of school when he was in seventh grade. He was arrested for selling drugs when he was 19 in Kansas City, Mo., where he was living.
He now describes his arrest, trial and sentencing as “almost like a cry for help.” Morton continued: “I wanted something better for myself.”