The Big Painting Challenge

A view of the studio last week...

Out of the blue less than three weeks ago on Monday afternoon I was called up by a man called Graham who had seen my paintings on the internet. He wondered if I would be interested in painting a large painting of the interior of a factory for his small start-up local energy company who wanted the painting for display at some forthcoming trade events. A bit random, you may think…I did too, but by Friday, after seeing some photos of the type of image he wanted, I had agreed to do it.

It was to be a giant 2m high x 4m wide canvas, one of the biggest paintings I have ever made, which I decided to do over 8 canvasses of 1m square fixed together, a bit like David Hockney’s large Yorkshire landscapes. This seemed a good idea, but by the following Wednesday, after spending 2 days in my studio hanging these canvasses together in my studio, staining the canvasses with a phthalo blue ground, and gridding and then painstakingly enlarging the preliminary drawing I had made, I found myself looking dumbly at this vast canvas surface which took up the whole of my studio wall,  very daunted and a little overwhelmed, wondering what I had let myself in for…it had seemed like it would be a nice change to do something like this, now it seemed like a completely mad idea, especially as they needed it by May 12th…

After a few days of staring at it and thinking about the technicalities of how to create this painting, last Saturday I dived in and spent a whole day working on it. After a few hours of very enjoyable but physically and mentally taxing work, I knew I was ‘in’, and that it would be ok. I could do it. I worked on it again on Monday evening and by the end of Tuesday I had finished it. I think it looks good. It looks very modernist in feel, like a David Bomberg, but also carried elements in its abstraction, of contemporary painters such as Stanley Whitney and Thomas Shiebitz, whose abstract, colourful paintings I like a lot. Graham and Pauline at Osmium Energy were also really pleased too. Phew. 

So that’s been a bit crazy. I now need to leave it to dry, which hopefully it will before the first trade event on May 12th, and get it transported out of my studio. As I write this though, and the dust settles a bit, I think what a risk it has been to create this in my humble garden studio in just a couple of weeks.  I think painting brings out the madness in me sometimes....

Bleak House

'Drive Thru', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2026

After the stresses of the ‘Autofictions’ exhibition it has been nice to step onto the other side of it, feeling a renewed sense of focus and purpose. The experience had been the cause of a lot of reflection, and with that I recently went on a night walk alongside a short stretch of road between West Bromwich and Oldbury  populated with various factories in old and new buildings, lorry and container parks and scattered in-between the imposing architecture of these places, ordinary residential houses that I find myself wondering about and thinking what it must be like to have some of these buildings literally in your back garden. I drive along it frequently and have meant to explore it with my camera for ages. 

At the small town of Oldbury itself there is a huge Sainsbury’s supermarket surrounded by the usual big name shopping outlets in these out of town non-descript and identical landscapes I refer to as the ‘geography of nowhere’, after the book of the same name by James Howard Kunstler. At the McDonald’s drive thru, from a distance, I took some photographs intrigued by the abstract compositional qualities of the grids, squares and numbers of the windows, as well as the details of screens and strange equipment. With the workers half-seen inside and the car gliding up to the window, with the equally half-seen driver distracted by his phone, these interactions and ingredients all added up to a compelling scene of contemporary life that I tried to later capture in this large painting, ‘Drive Thru’ at the top of this post. 

 a new painting, 'Street', oil on canvas, 90 x 110cms, 2026 based on this walk...

I walked on from here to the road that I was seeking and found myself photographing a range of subjects that included huge lorries parked up behind broken wire fences, suspicious and bored night watchmen in sentry boxes, and empty, quiet streets that in the buildings I walked past carried signs of their industrial past and history juxtaposed with more contemporary details of dirty and changeable signage and billboards that hinted at their use now.  

At night it was difficult to capture that much on my phone camera, but my intention has been to come here on a sunny day with my DSLR when the light breaks up the architectural forms with dynamic, geometrical shadows that I hope will provide some good reference material for further paintings of this post-industrial landscape. 

At some point I found myself in front of a large house with two front doors and two bay windows that indicated that it was divided into two dwellings. It also looked like it had once been part of a larger run of terraced houses that had strangely disappeared, and it now stood isolated from its surroundings of flattened wasteland on both sides. Looking up at the lighted window on the first floor I could make out a man sitting in his room staring at his phone sitting on the edge of his bed. Other lights in the building indicated other people living here in this bleak, neglected place. Being someone who grew up in the Seventies and Eighties on a council estate not far from here, when council housing was plentiful, cheap and council estates were relatively safe and warm communities,  I am often reminded by sights like this house of the absolute desperate housing situation in the UK now, especially for those at the bottom, in the tawdry, insecure and extortionate world of private landlords and renters. This house stood as a powerful symbol of the abject poverty and alienation of so much of contemporary life for far too many. 

'House', oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2026

When I crossed to the other side of the street to take a photograph of it, the headlights from oncoming traffic illuminated and shattered its flat façade with an array of strange and exciting colours, making the building even more unreal. I tried to capture this in this other painting I have made from this night’s walkabout. It’s all out there to see if you just look, but most of us don’t. As David Hockney says, ‘looking is hard’. Looking can be hard, and that’s why so often turning away can be the easier option. 

'Autofictions'

 

Exhibitions come down a lot quicker than they go up….

I recently spent an hour alone taking down a solo exhibition of my paintings at Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. I had called the exhibition ‘Autofictions’ and although the actual exhibition had only been on for two weeks I have been on a much longer journey with planning and preparing it, and had felt a lot more stressed and anxious about it than any other exhibition I can remember. I felt a little wrung out by it all. 

I have had many solo exhibitions over the years, 25 now, in various galleries and venues. Some galleries I have applied to and been offered exhibitions, mainly in municipal council-run galleries and art centres, rather than commercial, and others in spaces I have sought out or which have been recommended, such as more recently Malvern Library, or artist run spaces, believing strongly in the ‘do it yourself’ ethos of exhibiting your work, rather than waiting for the so-called gate keepers to offer me a show. I’ve built up a strong exhibiting track record like this, but the reach of the exhibitions always seems to be the same: a gathering of much-loved family and friends at the private view followed by a steady, but rather thin, stream of visitors. Despite diligently sending many invites to curators and galleries and local press for each exhibition hoping they might be interested in visiting I have rarely heard back from anyone in these fields. 

A recent painting set in a local park. I thought it would go well with the other 'parklife' scenes I was planning to present such as 'Join Hands', below

'Join Hands' oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms

This time however, I decided to commission a curator and art historian, Ruth Millington, to help me promote the exhibition and write a press statement that could also be used for a write-up in the Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Post and other newspapers printed and online. I just wanted to explore and invest (Ruth doesn’t come for free) in some different strategies to help expand the exhibition’s reach, give it more ‘legs’, and stretch me by doing something something different. 

Ruth has been forging a well-earned name for herself as the leading writer on art in the region and beyond with her weekly exhibition features in regional and national newspapers and online. She is an award-winning art historian and writer, curator and presenter (I’ve added a link at the end…). She also runs a ‘get gallery ready’ bootcamp course for artists each year, which I hear nothing but good things about from artist friends who have attended it, at Solihull College. So, when Ruth visited the studio, we had a good crit about the work I had up to that point selected for the exhibition and she persuaded me that some of the work wasn’t ‘ready’ i.e. good enough(!) and reflected and discussed what she thought were the best qualities in my paintings. She was very easy to talk to, but also firm, straight and forthright with her opinions. It was very useful and I enjoyed being kicked around a bit. Together we felt that the landscapes, which possessed a more poetic quality, were where my strengths were, rather than the portraits I had selected of delivery drivers and policemen in some of the selection. There was an encouraging ‘not yet’ about these pieces from Ruth, which I agreed with. Many of the paintings that I eventually decided on did, however contain figures but they were smaller representations of figures in relation to the surrounding landscapes, and I can now see that these work better and are more interesting. After the visit Ruth completed a great press statement, which I then used to help shape the revised and final selection of work.

with Ruth Millington at the PV (a great help)

Reading her words on the page about my work was very useful in helping me reflect on my work with a fresh perspective and consider what the strengths are, but I also found myself thinking more about the weaknesses, perhaps because of the ones I had rejected with Ruth.  I find myself walking a fine line between the two much of the time and through the process of preparing this exhibition I have felt very aware of my shortcomings and how so many of the paintings just end up not being good enough. Most painters are never satisfied, that’s what keeps you going on, but this time it has felt more than that. I wonder if it’s an age thing. You get older and hope to be getting better as you demand more from your work, but at times I have felt much more aware of my own creative limitations and that maybe I have hit them. I want to be good, but I just think I’m quite good. 

'Breathe', a recent very large painting of the local Vape shop...an ever increasing presence on the high street, and a front for much criminal activity apparently. 

Most of the paintings I selected were completed in the last 3 years, but I also chose work from further back to 2016. These included some small lorries and a large painting of a transit depot which all sat well with a more recent dramatic painting of a truck stop at night.  These older paintings were received positively and sat well with the newer work. It felt good to own these older ones again and present them to a newer audience. They are strong pieces and more unusual in their subject matter. As artists you tend to always look forward, not back- but despite them being older paintings they have still rarely been seen, and it felt right to try and present them to create a wider and more varied vision about my engagement with the landscape of the Midlands. Seeing these landscapes again, combined with the real interest they seemed to attract from visitors to the exhibition, made me want to dig in deeper and once again explore these post-industrial landscapes as I move forward.  In the end the exhibition also had a nice day and night feel, with some of my recent scenes set in parks and canals hanging alongside the paintings inspired by my night walks.  

'A Minor Place', oil on canvas, 200 x 150cms, 2016

'Wet Night at the Truck Stop' oil on canvas, 85 x 60cms, 2026

'The Others', oil on canvas, 110 x 150cms, 2025

This painting of travellers that had moved onto the local park was received well by my artist friends, but other visitors saw a nice scene of a camping site. I think this is interesting in itself, as many people if travellers do rock up at their local park find this same site of caravans in this context unsettling and somewhat disturbing. I wanted the painting to express this. 

artist friend, Janice Rider enjoying the exhibition (great photo!)

'4am', oil on canvas, 60 x 60cms, 2023

'The Big Screen'. A recent painting inspired by a trip to the cinema and our relationship with technology. It was also inspired by the paintings of Walter Sickert, who I have been recently looking at in the monograph accompanying the recent Tate retrospective. 

Despite my own doubts and anxieties about the exhibition, it was received well by all that visited, and I had a lot of visitors to the Private View. I also sold a couple of paintings.  There was also lots of press coverage online and in the regional press thanks to Ruth’s contacts and press statement. Other opportunities have opened up too, but I’m not able to say any more about these as yet. More than any recent exhibition though, it felt like it was a time to pause and reflect on what I have been doing. I left the gallery with my paintings alone that afternoon, excitedly unsure about what’s next?

https://ruthmillington.co.uk/

https://ruthmillington.co.uk/shaun-morris/

 

Where have you been, where are you going?

 

Hiding, 

oil on canvas, 30 x 40cms, 2025

Since my last blog post the effort spent in trying to resolve the still life painting seemed to kickstart a renewed energy in my painting and in a relatively short time I found myself making a number of new landscape paintings in quick succession, with the still life painting seeming to rapidly disappear from view in the rear-view mirror. It now sits rather mutely on my studio wall, the plant pot with the face staring somewhat annoyed back at me as if it is asking me not to forget it. But painting for me can be like that: I can tend to work quickly from one piece to the next without thinking too much, just doing, just trying to spend some of the energy for painting that I carry internally that can get pent up. This energy tends to then run its course, and one must stop and think and focus again more carefully about what it is I am doing to try and move things on. Which is what has happened with some of these new paintings that I’m quite excited about. 

There are these paintings which are the ones that were made fairly quickly, one after the other…

Nomads, 

oil on canvas, 60 x 70cms, 2025

Skip, 

oil on canvas, 60 x 70cms, 2025

Locking Up, 

oil on canvas, 30 x 30cms, 2025

Late Night Truck Stop, 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2025

View from the Supermarket Rooftop Car Park, 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2025

Hospital Appointment, 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2025

And then these larger ones which were more carefully thought out with more preparatory drawing beforehand before being executed…

Night Moves, 

oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms

Fable, 

oil on canvas, 100 x 150cms, 2025

The Afterlife, 

oil on canvas, 90 x 210cms, 2025

Empire of Dirt, 

oil on canvas, 100 x 210cms, 2025

These last two very wide canvasses were based on some photographs I took on one of my frequent visits to the local tip during the current bin strike in Birmingham which drags interminably on. I rediscovered these unusually wide (100 x210cms) canvasses from a sort out in the studio and thought they had the potential for some wide compositions that I was excited about that I had developed in my sketchbook. The first painting was based on a view I captured of a sea of discarded white fridges in a corner of the tip that I thought looked so striking. It was the sheer volume of them, but also their repeated sameness that cascaded across the frame with just some colour from the evening light cutting across them as shadows. I immediately saw that these elements correlated with some of the lessons I have absorbed from abstract painting- a lack or compositional hierarchy, a repetition of forms and a limited palette. 

The second painting is of a ‘gathering’ of different recycling bins, but this appealed in opposition to the fridges but was equally related to ideas that might be found in more abstract paintings- a rhythmic pattern across the surface created by the varying shapes, sizes and colours of the objects depicted. The planning of these paintings took longer but the actual execution of these paintings took just a couple of hours on each. I find them exciting, and it’s weird that such overlooked, or to some, ugly subject matter can hold such potential. I don’t think the finished paintings look ugly at all. 

I’ve enjoyed getting back into the landscape paintings again. There is so much to work with, which can be a blessing but also a curse when it comes to deciding what to work on. There’s too much choice and choices need to be made. But despite this, I’m hoping to work on some further paintings of figures and indoor spaces in the next few weeks..

Strange Victory, Strange Defeat...

'Artists are seekers. Some search for insights into cultural habits and circumstances; often they end up finding something else — a deeper sense of their own social role. Other artists concentrate on faithfully drawing and painting the objects around them. They’re liable to eventually arrive at a more elemental and solitary realization: what it means to exist in light and space….’

- John Goodrich reviewing ‘Peace Tree’, a retrospective of the works of Jason Harvey (1991-1982). 

In the studio…

I’m leaning too much into Matisse and Diebenkorn for quick solutions….the Red Studio, the Pink Studio…the Ocean Park paintings…trying to explore colour by lifting someone’s else’s explorations into colour. We all do it sometimes but that’s a lame excuse…Larry River’s paintings would have been a better approach to the surrounding space. I tried that in my sketchbook. There you go again…someone else’s shoes. 

Strange Victory…

What about just making a new painting based on a section of the bigger one? Like Suzanne Philips? I like her paintings. I like the simplification and the limited palette. And what about Jonas Wood’s graphic paintings of pot plants and those amazing interiors of his own home? I love those. Maybe I can do something like that? 

Strange Defeat…

…everything looks so mannered. Trying too hard. I can use all this grey on my palette though on the big painting. Jonas Wood uses a lot of neutral grey…

I need to paint the pot with the smiley face again today. It looks a bit like me when I was about eight years old…I don’t fancy it. Why don’t I just bring the pot out of its place at home and take it my studio to paint directly from it…I enjoy this way of painting still lives more, and I’m better at if. That’s the best idea I’ve had so far. It feels like a weight has been lifted…

Strange Victory…

That’s better. Here’s another canvas. I’m going to just paint the pot on its own and paint directly from life…Keep it simple. I feel more like David Hockney. He wears his influences on his sleeve but somehow comes out making paintings that can only be David Hockney’s…

I like the pot, but the depiction of the table looks a bit pants…I was looking at Susan Lichtman’s paintings. You can’t really tell. Her ones are good…!

Strange Defeat…

I have got rid of the background and the table line…. it’s ok, but it’s not finished.  I like the pot at least. I’ll come back to it…I get the other painting back on the easel and this time I bring all the pots and other objects to the studio and paint the rest of it directly from observation. This is much better and much more fun (painting should be enjoyable, at least for some of the time…). I have kicked out Matisse, Diebenkorn, Wood, Philips, Lichtman and everyone else out the door (except perhaps David Hockney, who hangs around for a fag..). It looks more like a painting of mine at least, but it is still not the best. I think it’s finished for now. It is some sort of record of this experience. I will live with it and see but I’m going to throw dirty turps over the big first painting, wipe it off and rub it down and think of something else….

Strange Victory, Strange Defeat…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVppNcUI1tM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4phNlof05lA

https://paintingperceptions.com/elizabeth-geiger/

https://www.booksteinprojects.com/artists/susannah-phillips

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5344

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO57L-InSdo

Just For A Moment....

'Driver's Story', currently on show in 'Habitat', a mixed group exhibition at Cupola Contemporary Art, Sheffield

I’ve had several busy weeks where the year now seems to be gathering some sort of momentum. 

Last week I delivered 2 paintings, ‘Driver’s Story’ and ‘A Home in England’ to Sheffield’s Cupola Contemporary Art Gallery for a mixed group exhibition, ‘Habitat’. I also was pleased to hear that I had had a painting, ‘Thinking of a Colour’, selected for the Coventry Open 2025 at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. This will be my third exhibition this year already. I’ve also hosted a couple of studio visits recently, where I have invited different artists and artistic contacts round to my studio to discuss my work. That has been enjoyable, and I am really grateful to Sam Weeks artist and John Sewell and Dean Melbourne from Cosimo Art Gallery for giving up their time for me. Listening to their views and insights on my work has felt like a real privilege and it is a very generous act. 

I have often thought ‘Driver’s Story’ is a particularly good painting, if I say so myself(!), but I never feel it has received much interest whenever I have shared it on the usual social channels or for the first time in an exhibition last year, so I’m really pleased to have it selected for the exhibition at Cupola. I think it looks great in some from the exhibition which the gallery sent me. It’s exciting to see it out in the world beyond my studio.

'Plushies', oil on canvas, 85 x 100cms...a new painting that attempts to create a sense of the overwhelming anxiety I often feel as a parent of two......

My studio work, however, seems to be developing more slowly. I am working unusually slowly now and feeling my way painting by painting, not sure what I am going to do from one piece to the next. My interests have widened out from the landscapes, and I am pursuing different strands of work at the same time. These include portraits, landscapes and still lives. One of my pet dogs, Maple, has also found her way into the work too as I slowly develop a series of paintings that turns their attention more to my home life as I reflect on my relationships with the things closer and more personal to me through the paintings

"Maple on the Settee', oil on canvas, 60 x 60cms

I completed a portrait of my son, in a week when he was feeling particularly vulnerable that concerned us all at home. I felt compelled to capture an image of him on my camera phone as I looked in on him as I went to bed, after feeling very moved by the sight of him under the covers watching his TV in bed looking very small and young again (he is now 16). This painting seems to resonate with a lot with those who have seen it, particularly those who are parents.  Dean Melbourne, artist and arts advisor was very moved by it on his studio visit. I also took it to an ‘artwork appraisal’ at the RBSA where it was also received well, and I felt the more nuanced formal decisions I carefully think about were seen by the artists appraising the work that day. Both these experiences have been some sort of validation of this painting, so I think I might try and look for exhibition opportunities to put this piece forward to. 

'Under The Covers', oil on canvas, 60 x 80cms

I find myself on a real journey lately where I feel rather unsure as to where I’m going. Sometimes I feel like I should just determine a more defined and narrower theme for a series of works and go for that, cutting out all these other interests that fight for my attention, you can only do so much after all, and maybe soon I will, but at the moment I’m just trying to go with the flow…

'Highly Commended' at the Coventry Open 2025

After writing this statement above yesterday ( I tend to write the blog posts over a few days),  I reflected that perhaps the paintings about my immediate surroundings at home are the project I’m looking for and I just need to commit to that for a few months. I also attended the private view of the Coventry Open and my painting ‘Thinking of a Colour’ was selected as Highly Commended. I was quite shocked but also taken aback by feeling quite emotional. I persist so hard with my painting and it felt that after what has been a really difficult period in my life my painting felt ‘seen’…I’m not very good at ever celebrating my own work but sometimes, just for a minute, I need to remind myself I maybe should…

Hunters in the Snow...

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2025

It’s been a busy and productive January in the studio. I started the year wondering where I might go with my work but ended up painting a flurry of landscape paintings in a couple of weeks that I really enjoyed doing. I have less and less of a plan for my work in recent years and just try and follow what happens in the studio. The work is based on observations of the world around me and that means I tend to lie in wait for something to come along, a thread to pick up and pull, remaining alert and open to chance, or when it comes to the landscape, I go out hunting with my camera and sketchbook. 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2025

At the beginning of the month, we had a blanket of snow fall across the country which pulled me out from the warmth of the house and out into the local common, canal and woodlands that I often frequent on my dog walks to enjoy taking several photographs. I have done several winter snowscapes now, which began in the winter lockdown of 2021, and I like the way the landscape becomes cleansed and simplified, and the colour reduced, and how quiet everything becomes. I like observing the skeleton of the landscape revealed in winter, particularly the bones of the dark trees, partially and temporarily hidden under the snow. I photographed some interesting fallen trees which reminded me of some of Graham Sutherland’s depictions of trees and plant forms in the Welsh landscape, but for now I have painted these paintings based on the paths I follow on my walk…

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2025