Update: Roy Morrissey died on July 7, 2011, in Hemet.
The tourists called it Tee-mah-COOL-ya, if they called it anything at all. There were only a few hundred people in Temecula in the 1960s, but located as it was halfway between the art towns of Laguna Beach and Palm Springs it was perfectly situated for a mini art explosion of its own.
Travelers on the old three-lane highway braked when they saw a sign on a roof that read “Art Shack”. The windows of the sagging structure were filled with paintings of smoke trees and canyons; the sweet sounds of violin issued from within.
After the visitors had been charmed by Ralph Love–a beret-wearing, violin-playing ordained minister and student of Sam Hyde Harris–they naturally wandered a few blocks down the street to admire the paintings of horses and barns at The Art Stop. Here the upstart Roy Morrissey was drafting off Love’s roadside success–at Love’s invitation. “I think Ralph wanted company,” he said recently.
In the heyday, says Morrissey, he was making $1,200 a week–good money for an artist then. Every few minutes the cowbell rang in his studio, announcing a new guest. With the addition of Morrissey, Temecula had itself an art scene—a scene that thrives to this day in the galleries and festivals around town.
Love died in 1992. While the Art Shack is also gone, the restaurant that stands in its place, Baily’s, sports a “Love’s Courtyard” and a historical plaque recognizing the Art Shack. Love’s paintings now hang in museums and collections throughout the West. He’s known for his symphonic Grand Canyon scenes as well as the California classic trio of desert, sea and mountains. Temecula honors the pioneer painter with its Ralph Love Plein Air Festival each year.
The second roadside artist, Roy Morrissey is now 85 and living in Hemet. On a recent morning I drove out to talk to him about the original Temecula art shack colony. His home was easy to spot because of the new yellow motorhome out front. Since his wife died just over a year ago, Morrissey has decided to hit the road once he can convince his black lab, Candy, to climb the steps of the motorhome. He’ll be setting off for Vermont to paint pictures of old houses.
A graduate of the California College of Arts and Crafts, Morrissey drew pictures since he was small. He started out his career doing window displays for JC Penney’s in San Francisco, then worked in illustration and advertising in Salt Lake City. He had returned to California and was teaching art at Palomar College in San Marcos 1966, when he and Ralph Love happened to be in the same art show.
When Love invited Morrissey to set up a studio in Temecula, Roy rode out on his motorcycle and saw there was not much there—just a few old Western buildings, a saloon and a cafe called the Swing Inn. Love’s Art Shack (his daughters kidded him by calling it Art’s Love Shack) was humble at best. “Let me say, if you have ever seen a shack, the Art Shack was the shack of all shacks,” Morrissey once said. Still, Ralph Love managed to persuade the younger artist. “He was like a rock star”, says daughter Lee Love Youngman of her dad’s compelling personality.
The man Morrissey called “Ralphus” was a traveling evangelist who turned his religious fervor to art and landscape when he opened his shack in 1959. His daughters Lee Youngman and Evelyn Love Norris remember painting expeditions to the deserts around Palm Springs when they were young. Youngman, a Calistoga art dealer, says their mother Bertha—also a minister–would unfurl a big blanket and the four kids would play while dad painted. On one occasion, 4-year-old Lee was stung by a scorpion. Bertha laid her hand on the child and willed away the poison, saying with conviction: “This is not going to hurt you.”
Love, an early member of the Laguna Beach Art Association, taught art classes in Palm Springs and Palm Desert. He was one of five artists commissioned to paint diorama backdrops for wildlife displays at the Living Desert.
Morrissey took up Love’s offer and set up in the old Stallion Hotel on Front Street; he later purchased a lot on the same street and hauled in a secondhand mobile home for his studio. While hanging out with “the painting preacher”, Morrissey also became a desert artist. The two traded tips with desert painters Burt Proctor, Bill Bender, Karl Albert, John Hilton, Jimmy Swinnerton and Sam Hyde Harris–Ralph Love’s one and only art teacher. Both Love and Morrissey painted covers for the High Country, a Temecula magazine, and showed at the Desert Art Center in Palm Springs.
At first business was slow for Morrissey. His wife worked as a nurse and he brought in a small government stipend due to a spinal injury suffered while serving in WWII. The artist soon realized the paintings sold faster if there was a horse or barn in the mix, so Morrissey ended up adding lots of horses and barns to his landscapes. He frequently visited the hay barn on Temecula’s Roripaugh Ranch, at one time an empire of 6,500 acres of wheat, barely and alfalfa. He jokes: “I sold paintings of their barn so many times that I felt guilty and gave one of my paintings to Roripaugh.”
Morrissey left Temecula in 1978 when the town grew too big for art shacks. Collector Mark Wasserkrug of Palm Desert says the painter deserves to be as well known as his buddy, Ralph Love. “I believe he is one of those artists who didn’t get the press he needed to achieve the level of Ralph Love, Darwin Duncan and Fred Penney, all very collectible artists,” he says.
Morrissey’s subject has always been the West: Cowboys, Indians, trains, barns, shacks and the town of Tee-mah-COOL-ya. “There were cowboys right here in Temecula then,” he says. Today there are more artists than cowboys in Temecula, thanks to the colony-of-two.
For more on Ralph Love, visit his daughter Lee Youngman’s website:
Thank you Ann, for a wonderful article. You captured the historical value of these two artists for Tee-mah-COOL-ya Valley.
The article honored each, revealing a little of their personality.
Ralph and Bertha loved to share afternoon coffee or tea with the Morrissey’s as friends, as well as “fellow artists”
Evelyn Love Norris
Very interesting article as always! Wow has Temecula Changed. I thought the painting of the smoke tree was beautiful
Thank-you for a great article. I remember the Art Shack. I was raised just over the mountain in Rainbow, CA. I remember being an art student in college and visiting the Art Shack. The art was fabulous.
I am Roy Morrissey’s step-daughter. My sister and I are going to be selling Roy’s paintings that he had in his studio. Does anyone have any ideas? He was well known in Temecula and there are some paintings of Old Town Temecula. My mother and Roy lived on the corner of 5th St. next door to his studio, back when that was just about the end of town. I drove there today and it is very overwhelming. There is a portrait of Ralph Love and a couple of self portraits of Roy, the Bank, landscapes, Indian, Mr. Bianci, etc. Does anyone know who I can get in touch with? Clidine Roper from Banning Center for the Arts has taken some on consignment. I will be taking part in the “Art Hop” being held there May 5, 2012. I have taken pictures of all the art that we have and put them on a CD.
My father-in-law lived in the area in the 60’s and was friends with an artist he remembers calling ‘Hoss’ Hawkins. ‘Hoss’ gave him a Ralph Love painting that Ralph had given him. It is personally signed on the back and we love it! Does anyone have any info on Mr Hawkins?
Wow! Thank you for sharing this history… I walked past the gate and saw the plaque…Then, because of the historical aspect I decided to have dinner at restaurant only to learn that the waiter and waitress who served me had no idea of what or who I was inquiring about nor the exact location of where the studio stood. I felt I leaving but decided to stay and have something to eat.
I am LeRoy Morrissey niece. He was named after my father LeRoy Forsythe. Ethel was his mother which was my aunt. I would be interested in a painting if you have one to sell. I also have quite a bit of more history of the family .
Another fascinating story…these stories are so inspirational and so important to document. Thanks for
all the hard work to make this site what it is Ann!
Charleen Wiersma, this would make you my cousin since I am Roy Morrissey’s youngest daughter. I own a couple of his paintings but interested in what family history you may have!
I have a painting by Roy Morrissey which shows a women in a green low cut dress dress sitting on a large orange stuffed chair, she is holding a carnation or a red rose on her left hand, she has red hair and a large white ear ring, she is showing her beautiful crossed legs. I obtained this at a silent auction around 2014 or 2015 at Reins Therapeutic Horsemanship I was a volunteer there at the time when they were holding the Funraiser for the center. my wife and I were also volunteers at the event. I would like to know if relatives of Roy remember the painting, it is very beautiful and we finally have it framed. I would possibly like to know if I could receive a DOA (document of authenticity) Thank you, Alfonso
Hello Everyone I’m looking for a Roy Morrissey painting for my Dad on fathers days and help would be much appreciated