About the artist:

Samuel F.B Morse, Jr (1941 - 2025) was an American artist who was also known as Oakland Sam "Morse". At 14, he got a scholarship to attend a silk-screening class at California College of Arts and Crafts. Later, he received a full scholarship to attend the college, achieving a certificate in painting.

Over the years, Morse worked many jobs to support his first love and each job had a relationship to the visual arts. He worked as a landscaper, a furniture refinisher, an auto body metalworker, even a railroad worker: "I was attracted to that because of all the graffiti" on the rail cars. While training at CCAC, Morse avoided studying with his favorite painter, Nathan Oliveira, for fear that he would be too influenced by the artist. "I like his painting too well," said Morse, who is also a big fan of Renoir.

He quit drawing at age 19, preferring a looser abstract style, with his later paintings having evolved into distinct imagery -- more like drawings than abstract art. Remarkably, Morse's studio in Benicia, which he called "the cave," had no windows, but did have cathedral ceilings -- 16 feet high, allowing for the creation of larger works. The studio light is always the same, day or night, so the artist doesn't really get a different perspective until he takes the paintings outdoors to photograph them.

Being a dedicated artist didn't help his home life. Morse was divorced, but he had two sons and a daughter that live in the Bay Area, and all three are artists as well. Thalo Silverwolf Morse is a painter who worked with her Dad in the studio, and Montana Littlebear is a graphic artist. Morse's daughter Jewel Essence, 30, draws faces on everything -- backs of envelopes, scraps of paper, blue jeans. "The whole family paints on pants," Morse quipped.

Besides painting, Morse was passionate about music. He played blues harmonica and was a huge fan of Sam "Lightnin' " Hopkins. "He's my mentor in the music and in the art," the artist said. "Growing up in West Oakland, that's the type of music that seemed to grow on me." Morse saw Hopkins play live and went backstage afterward to talk with him. The guitarist had shared a bunch of stories on stage and interacted with the bass player as if they were old buddies. After the show, Morse found out that Hopkins had never played with the bass player before. Hopkins had made up all the stories, but they were about life -- about everybody. That made a big impression on Morse.

The artist used his artwork to tell stories, but he wanted the imagery to leave things unanswered. "A lot of them don't really have a beginning and they don't really have an end," he said. "I really like when someone buys a painting and calls me three years later and says, 'Was there really a duck in one corner of the painting? Cause I didn't see it until today.' And I just say: 'I don't know.' "