Tuesday 23 October 2012

Stolen Car

oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012
Last week, I finished this painting which for now I want to be the last in my series of nocturnal motorway paintings. I’m pretty pleased with it: I managed to achieve something looser and a bit more open with it, which I think comes with painting these structures so many times over the last few months. I’m going to be exhibiting some of them for the first time in November in a group show I’m organizing with some artists friends, which I have previously mentioned, but will be posting much more about in the next few days.  In February 2013 however, I will be exhibiting hopefully most of them in a solo exhibition I have now secured at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery’s Floor One Gallery. This will be a great opportunity to showcase them more coherently.


I’ve been working on this series, which includes many large charcoal drawings, for almost exactly a year. My first large painting was first attempted in January. It feels more important now to be exploring the edgelands theme more widely, and try and attempt to develop some of the work made in Scandinavia.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to receive the help of my friend, Danny Bird, a professional photographer based in London, who came up to photograph them professionally for me, as I have been having real difficulty doing it myself. I’m enormously grateful to him, as I think the resulting pictures look stunning, so it only feels timely to share the whole series of paintings now. Reflecting on them now, I am pleased that despite the repeated motif of the motorway, I think there is a real variety in not just the compositions, but the mood expressed in the paintings. That’s what I think anyway!
oil on canvas, 30 x 45cms, 2011
oil on canvas, 140 x 100cms, 2011
oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2011
oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012
oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012
oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012
oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2012
oil on canvas, 150 x 210cms, 2012

oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2012
oil on canvas, 150 x 110cms, 2012

Here's a link to Danny's website and blog. Thanks again, Danny:

http://www.dannybird.co.uk/
http://www.dannybird.wordpress.com


And here are a couple of pictures of the handsome devil that created them taken outside the studio! Or me anyway….











2 comments:

Hugh Marwood said...

Shaun.

I realise you're moving on to fresh pastures now but this is an impressive body of work. I'm looking forward to seeing them exhibited together next year.

I like the way you approached the same subject from different directions, allowing you to explore composition, interraction of -/+ space, shadow/light etc. The views through a screen of foliage are intriguing too and act as a useful punctuation to the formal architecture of the overall series.

Good stuff!

shaun morris said...

Thanks Hugh, that means alot!