MORRIS GRAVES: IMAGES OF THE INNER EYE

THE world of the Pacific Northwest's mystic Morris Graves is seen in low-keyed colors: dark browns, misty greys, the glint of surf. Done with techniques heavily influenced by the Orient, his work reveals a world of nature, ranging from joyous pines to blind and wounded birds, that is at once familiar and yet hauntingly mysterious. His current retrospective exhibition of 94 paintings and drawings at Manhattan's Whitney Museum shows what an increasing number of collectors and critics have come to realize: Painter Graves at 45 has developed one of the most successful, personalized idioms in U.S. painting today.

Of his own work, Graves says: "I am not so much a naturalist as some people suppose." His drawing, Loon Calling on an Autumn Lake (below), leaves little doubt that it records a scene Graves observed and pondered. But as he has brushed it in with ink, it catches overtones of the full-throated, eerie cry that summons up another world, both lonely and mysterious. For to Graves, Nature and Symbol are one when seen with the artist's inner eye. His Concentrated Pine Top (opposite), done on a vertical scroll, gives a sense of strength and detachment, and is as Oriental in texture as it is in feeling.

Nowadays, Graves lives in Ireland, a bearded recluse who insists on privacy. There he has added to his list of subjects the hedgerow ferret, and the fox balled up within itself against winter. But living abroad does not mean he has turned his back on the Northwest. Says Graves: "I have memorized the Northwest so I can use it. It does not crowd me like a new environment. I have it in memory."

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