'Vans' (of course)

 

‘That’s been a little jewel of an exhibition’, Paul said to me as we shook hands and wished each other well after taking down the ‘Vans’ exhibition the other day. 

The exhibition had been Birmingham based artist Paul Newman’s idea and had been in a small space called The Showcase Gallery at the bottom of the Jubilee Trades Centre, a 3-storey building on the edge of Birmingham’s Chinese Quarter which houses amongst other things a collection of artist’s studios. You have to be a studio holder to exhibit in the gallery, which Paul is, and after an exhibition fell through he had planned with someone else, Paul contacted me and proposed an alternative on the theme of vans seeing that they were a feature in both his own and my work. Sure, I said, why not? What shall we call it? ‘Vans’ he said. Of course, I thought. What else? 

A view of the studio wall prior to hanging the exhibition

I’ve only known Paul this last year, but I’ve known his work in various exhibitions in Birmingham for many years, which includes a solo exhibition at the Midland Arts Centre in 2016. He has quite a high-profile and is well respected in the region, as well as being very active with Contemporary Paint Britain, conducting many of the monthly interviews with artist members. His latest one was with Graham Crowley which you can read here: 

https://www.contemporarybritishpainting.com/graham-crowley-artist-of-the-month/

Paul was also kind enough to give up his time last summer to visit my studio in one of my regular studio visits that I have built into my studio time in the last 18 months. As well as being an artist, Paul is a seasoned University lecturer and is currently a lecturer on the Fine Art Degree at Loughborough University. His extensive experience of discussing artwork and knowledge of art history was incredibly useful in discussing my own work and left me with much food for thought (these visits, which I have tried to schedule every 6 weeks or so, have proven very useful but following the last one I now just want to be left alone to make my work for a while…)

'Luton Van', oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms- a recent painting I created for the show

The Vans theme was good at bringing into focus a clear theme for the benefit of the exhibition. I like typological ideas in art and so I really enjoyed selecting a group of paintings along these lines. As I hung different iterations of them on the studio wall- I had around 20 I could have selected from-I felt excited seeing all the different ways I had ‘skinned the same cat’ so to speak over about 10 years and to paraphrase Chuck Close and how he viewed his own ceaseless experiments in depicting the heads of his sitters. I also felt in a rare moment of feeling positive about my work that the series looked good and that these paintings were strong. It reminded me of what is capable if you keep working and showing up, which is one thing I never have much trouble with. 

One of Paul's large paintings in situ

Painting by Paul Newman

Painting by Paul Newman

'As Days Get Dark', oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms...one of my paintings

Paul’s own paintings were very different to my own with my  roots in observation. Paul’s are more conceptual and an intriguing mixture of engaging with nineteenth century Romantic landscape paintings such as those of Constable, Turner and Gainsborough, with a bit of Rubens thrown in(!), and the idea of the ruin, which is where the van motif came in, and referencing his own personal history and relationship with his Dad who drove a Ford Escort van similar to those depicted in his paintings. One afternoon whilst we sat in the exhibition, Paul described his memories of his Dad returning home from work on Friday teatimes and reversing the van up the drive which pleasantly changed my view of the paintings. I had previously viewed the vans as sort of crashing into the landscape, but now I saw them try to back up and reverse out of them….

Paul Newman at work...

My side of the exhibition space

With these differences in mind Paul had a great idea to divide the exhibition space with double yellow lines constructed out of masking tape on the wall with his paintings on one side and mine on the other. This worked well and the final installation looked great. We had a busy Private View with visitors intrigued by the unusual theme, and then the exhibition ran throughout August by appointment where Paul and/or I opened up for what turned out to be a steady stream of visitors, including artists Barbara Walker and Matthew Krishanu. 

Private View

...with artist Paul Newman

I’ve had such a busy year with exhibitions, with this being the tenth one I’ve shown work in to date, but I have to say this rather unusual ad-hoc collaborative one has been the most enjoyable so far. Thanks to Paul for asking me along…

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The Big Painting Challenge Part 2....

I thought it would be interesting to share a few follow-on photos of the large commission painting I recently completed installed in situ at the trade events that Osmium Energy wanted to use the paintings for.  

I visited the first event at Wolverhampton Racecourse with trepidation just hoping that they had managed to attach all the different canvasses together successfully and somehow get them to stand up as was their wish. I was a bit uncertain about how easy this would be, but they seemed confident, so I was keen to leave them to it having fulfilled my part of the work in creating the painting. But I needn’t have worried. When I arrived, I immediately spied the painting across the hall, and it looked great. The colours look much richer than in my own efforts to photograph the painting in my studio, and it was also hinged like a Japanese folding screen which I thought looked nice and this had only been made possible by the flexibility the multiple canvasses offered. 

What a relief and rewarding to see the end result turning out so successfully.

Back of the Net....

'Baggie Bird and Boiler Man', oil on canvas, 30 x 40cms, 2026

I was pleased to hear this week that I had had a painting selected for The Football Art Prize 2026, an exhibition celebrating ‘the beautiful game’ and that will feature up to 75 artworks from around the world. It will be on show at Sheffield’s Millenium Gallery in June-August, and then at the National Football Museum in Manchester in November. The private view on June 10th will be on the night before the first World Cup Match. There were 900+ entries apparently, and the judges included Tim Marlow, the director of The Design Museum, renowned artist Harland Miller and England Women’s footballer, Jessica Naz. 

'After The Match', oil on canvas, 30 x 40cms, 2026

I must admit I had my eye hopefully on trying to get into this exhibition after I saw a call-out a few months ago. I thought it might make a nice change to other open exhibitions I apply for. I had also not long completed 2 football-based paintings that I thought might be worth entering. I then felt it might be a good idea to try another one. Three seemed a better number than two, and at 30 x 40cms, they are all the same modest size. All of them are based on my occasional experiences of accompanying my son to the Hawthorns to watch West Bromwich Albion, but I can’t say I am a big football fan. At these matches my interest is drawn more towards the atmosphere in and around the ground and watching the fans rather than the actual match itself, a fact that is reflected in the first two paintings. These are of a queue at a burger van; a regular, comforting sight on the post-match walk to the car, and a view in the stand as the fans start to gather before the match, meeting up again with friends and familiar faces in regular spots.  

'Pre-Match Tension', oil on canvas, 30 x 40cms, 2026

The painting I had selected, which I thought if anything might pique the judges interest more because of its unusual subject matter, is based on my enjoyment of the pre-match ritual of the team Mascots that launch onto the pitch in bizarre, cumbersome, and probably very hot, costumes before the start of the match. One of the costumes is usually a representation of that year’s club sponsors, in this case a local boiler company for the mascot known as Boiler Man. The other mascot, Baggie Bird, is associated with the Baggies long historical mascot of the Throstle bird. The mascots normally stumble about, say hello to younger fans waiting to meet their heroes, and then take a few shots at goal to the roar of the crowd who are warming up by now. It’s a silly, but nice part of the match day culture which I enjoy. That and a balti pie with a cup of hot tea….I’m pleased the painting did score a goal with the judges. Although on the surface it may appear a bit light a friend said that he found it rather poignant. That will do me. Back of the net!

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..