Pete Morris has been supporting himself and his family through graphic design, illustration work and production art since the early 1980’s. He has always
drawn and painted, and can remember being attracted to watercolor even as a teenager. During the 1990’s he did monochromatic paintings done using sumi ink in a watercolor technique. These were paintings and drawings of people and scenic paintings of places he visited. Around the year 2000, he started doing watercolors in color, and focused on a series of scenes along Rte.66. About five years ago, he discovered that he could do plein air sketches and paintings on the way to and from work and on lunch breaks and thereby produce a lot more work. He has endeavored since then to produce an average of one piece of art every day and he posts what he has done on Facebook. He feels that by taking advantage of he opportunity to paint wherever he goes, whenever he can, he has been evolving in style and quality as an artist. He believes that being prolific is important to development of artistic skill, style and vision.

He has published a few books which are collections of his paintings and sketches, the most notable being Riding the Metro, which is 114 pages of watercolor sketches of people on the Metro train. He has been featured in a YouTube videolog called “Metro da Vinci” which is about his artwork done on the trains. He recently had a one-man show of his work at Azusa Pacific University and spoke to the students in the Art Department.

In November, Pete travelled with volunteers from Mending Kids International to Guatemala on a medical mission. He went to document through watercolor sketches the tremendous work of doctors from Duke University and The University of North Carolina as they performed life changing surgery on children. He sketched and painted the medical professionals at work, the children with their families, the volunteers and the environs of Moore Clinic, where the surgeries took place.