End of Days

 It’s been such an intense, surreal and difficult year. Even so I think I’m in a better situation than many with regards to the pandemic and its effects on my life. I have a good, steady job as a Fine Art lecturer which has continued since March, a roof over my head, food on the table, space for my kids to play outside. At one point in time these were seen as almost the given basics if you could hold down a job, but since the Eighties and Thatcherism, accelerated at unbelievable speed since 2010, so many have seen a complete degradation in their job conditions, can barely manage to find and keep an affordable home, and even put food on the table. These things have preyed a lot on my mind lately and especially over the Christmas period.

It’s the incredible work of scientists, hopefully with the vaccine, that will help the world return to some sort of, albeit deeply scarred, normality in 2021, but I think it’s important to acknowledge how our cultural lives can offer so much support as a way of navigating ourselves through difficult periods in our lives. Art, music, books, film, theatre and TV can be incredibly inspiring, affirming and consoling as we see aspects of our lives reflected back at us- it’s what I seek in much of the culture I seek out- but also can be a great escape from it all. I’ve been thinking about what I have discovered this year that has helped me through these times….

'Death of Winston Rose', Denzil Forrester, oil on canvas, 1981

With galleries closed for so much of this year I’ve not been to see much art, but before lockdown in March I loved visiting the exhibition of paintings by Denzil Forrestor. ‘Itchin’ and Scratchin’, at Nottingham Contemporary. That was a definite highlight of the year- the paintings were so full of life, be it in the character’s lived depicted in the scenes of the Afro-Caribbean community of dub clubs and tough streets, or in the artist’s very sophisticated use of colour and form and his use of drawing in his vast, complex compositions. They had something to say that felt borne out of a lived experience and possessed a sincerity, directness and honesty that reached out to a wider audience. They were a refreshing change to so much art on display and spoke deeply to me, taking me back to some of my own formative roots in painting. I looked closely at Denzil’s paintings as a student in the early 1990’s, and even had tutorials with him, and learned a lot of lessons from his work which I still apply. There is a great lively interview with Denzil on the ‘TalkArt’ podcast that you can find on many podcast apps. I use Castbox to download or stream the regular ones I listen to.  

Poet Roger Robinson (photo courtesy of The Guardian)

Sort of related, in the sense that his work is rooted in his experience of being a member of the black community in Britain and also in the Caribbean, Roger Robinson’s award winning book of poetry, ‘A Portable Paradise’, is the book that had the biggest emotional impact on me this year. Many of the poems deal with the Grenfell fire tragedy and are incredibly moving, and unsurprisingly upsetting, causing a tightening across the chest in this reader. Others deal with the experience of being an immigrant, a refugee, or a black artist in words that have a calm anger, wisdom and clarity of vision. In the year of Black Lives Matter and where we are all hopefully (I know this is probably naïve but I certainly am) thinking with a greater awareness of the experience of black people in this country and the US in particular the book is very prescient. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Comus as featured on compilation by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs 'Gather In The Mushrooms'

If I were to choose any music that has been a good companion this year it will be the discovery of some of the thematic compilation albums of music created by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. This began with ‘Gather In The Mushrooms’, an album recommended in the ‘A Year In The Country’ book I have discussed in previous recent posts (this, alongside Mark Fisher’s ‘The Weird and the Eerie’, would be my other book of the year for how many cultural doors it has opened to me), a collection of Psych and Acid Folk Music from the late sixties and early seventies, whose songs from a wide variety of artists is rooted in a slightly otherworldly English folk tradition. I love it and found myself really immersed in its musical landscape during the long summer evenings in the studio. A particular standout track is ‘The Herald’ by Comus, which is such a stunningly atmospheric song. I have a vivid memory of painting late one evening in July a scene of local woods and sitting exhausted at about midnight having finished the painting as this haunting track played on my Walkman and filled the room. I was pleased with the painting but the whole experience felt quite emotional: the effort of painting, my tiredness, the somewhat heady transportation of the album’s music to this amazing end track and coping with the whole pandemic and the effect it has had on my family in various ways.

This album remains my favourite of the compilations but I have also loved ‘English Weather’, a collection of early Seventies rock, in its broadest sense, by long forgotten and overlooked bands, ‘The Tears Of Technology’, also dubbed ‘the sadness of synthesizers’, a superb collection of late seventies and early Eighties English synth and electronic bands and solo artists including the brilliant lost classic ‘Private Plane’ by Thomas Lear (And if the opening short melancholy instrumental opening track by China Crisis doesn’t floor you well I just can’t help you, I really can’t). The most recent one I bought was the brilliant ‘Tim Peaks’, a collection of lost indie Eighties classics interweaved with more recent music by various artists with a binding link to the aesthetic of early Factory records (well apparently according to Bob Stanley and Tim Burgess who put this one together). Conceptually it is also a reimagining of Twin Peaks and it’s diner being relocated to a café in North West England and is thus an imaginary soundtrack to a late wintry afternoon near the Pennines with a mug of tea and a great jukebox in the corner looking through rain lashed windows. I like afternoons like these and have had my fair share of them when I lived up north in the West Riding.

In all of these records the sleeve notes are lovingly and enthusiastically presented by Stanley and Wiggs. It’s like listening to a great compilation tape put together with the joy and care of an older brother or good friend. It brings back fond memories for me of these experiences in my twenties when a new compilation tape would land on the doorstep from one of brothers at Uni, or the hours I spent putting one together for them or my wife. It seems from a time when these things seem to matter more.

The Adam Buxton Podcast (with dog Rosie)

Other listening pleasures include the Adam Buxton podcast of which I have listened to all 147 episodes now. It’s a great companion on the bus journey to and from work. Adam Buxton is a brilliant interviewer and in his ‘Ramble Chats’ manages to pull off the trick of seeming like he isn’t really trying in fascinating, funny, sometimes irreverent, in-depth talks with comedians, poets, writers, political and social thinkers, legends where Buxton is always warm and engaged. Two recent ones with the poet/activist Benjamin Zephaniah and Paul McCartney were compelling and brilliant. I could highlight so many more, but you should check it out yourself. I don’t know anything about so many of the people interviewed beforehand but always get something out of each podcast.

'The Mandolorian' on Disney+

And my escapism? That would have to be ‘The Mandolorian’, the Star Wars spin off series on Disney+. How cool is that show? I love it and is everything the Star Wars prequels and recent sequels have promised but never really delivered on, from the great storylines but also the design of it all, which is always the part of Star Wars that has made the deepest impression on my imagination from when I saw it as a kid.

It looks like 2021 is going to continue to be a rough ride for several months still, so hang on in there. Thanks to all those who continue to support me and show an interest in my work. Wishing you all well into 2021...

https://www.frieze.com/article/denzil-forrester-i-had-find-something-shook-me

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/13/roger-robinson-poets-can-translate-trauma

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jan/26/bob-stanley-and-pete-wiggs-present-english-weather-review-ace

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/aug/29/adam-buxton-dad-more-proud-of-me-but-he-was

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/24/the-mandalorian-review-baby-yoda-has-finally-come-to-the-uk-was-it-worth-the-wait-disney

Still On The Road...Just

work in progress, oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2020

I’m just posting to let you know that I’ve re-designed, updated and published a new version of my website. It’s still at the same address: www.shaunmorrispaintings.com.

It was forced upon me when I realised how different my website looked on the mobile phone, with all my titles and information absent. After contacting my site provider, ‘Portfoliobox’ (who I would really recommend) I was told I was using an old template and would need to do the whole thing again! Luckily (sort of) they migrated all of my images to the new version and I was left to plod on redesigning it over the last few months, able to keep the old one until I was ready to publish this new site. It’s been pretty easy, but just time consuming, but I’m pleased with how it looks. I’ve rationalised much of the work too into fewer portfolios of work, but most of it remains just in a different format. I’ve also added a shop to make it more accessible to buy my work as well as other things such as T-Shirts, Tote bags, and the Indigo Octagon Publications. I aim to use the store to showcase different pieces each month but as most of the work is for sale on my website, I just hope it gives anyone interested a guide to the prices of my artwork if they were interested in buying. I also hope to hold online sales of certain pieces of work for a limited period every 3 months next year, but that scares me a bit so we’ll see.

Exhibition at College view

Last weekend I delivered a recent painting, ‘Winter Field’, to an Open Exhibition at the General Office Art Gallery and Studios in Stourbridge. It’s an artist run set-up that’s been operating for the last 2 years or so, and is a welcome cultural addition to the Black Country Arts Scene which has seen the closure of many galleries in recent years including Dudley Museum and Art Gallery. For me, after a torrid year for all of us, but for so many artists including myself who has had two exhibitions cancelled this year due to Covid, it just felt great taking along a painting and showing again. The exhibition is due to open in January all being well, but will also be available to see online.

'Lockdown' (left) and 'The Green Door' (right)

'Limbs' (left) and 'Morning Way' (right)

'The Edge Of The Field' (left) and 'The Herald' (right)

And finally, I also in the last fortnight at work I also decided, quite spontaneously, to exhibit a few paintings in the corridor near the Art Department. There is a nice generous wall space there. It’s been an awful year due to Covid, but for me it’s also been one of my most consistently creative for a long time, with my painting as ever sustaining me during what continues to be a very challenging time. It’s been great to back teaching though and in amongst the community of students and I’ve been trying to deliver projects that ask the students to reflect on some of their own but also our collective experiences of the last few months, which is exactly what I’ve been doing since March too. I’m on a real creative journey, so It only seemed right to share some of my work too. I chose not to show my current work though, I’m not ready for that, but the more vibrant, colourful paintings I made from March to August. I’m so glad I did too- not only did they look great at college, but I had such a positive response from my social media friends it felt like I had had a small online exhibition of sorts. It felt really worthwhile.

Merry Christmas. Stay Safe.

 

Go on...treat yourself!

'The Far Field', oil on canvas, 30 x 40cms, 2020

I’m pleased to say I’m one of a small number of artists now represented by ‘Small Works Art Gallery’: www.smallworksartsgallery.com,  

It's a new online gallery platform set up by local Birmingham based but American born artist and recent Slade graduate Monica Perez Vega. Its aim is to sell modest scale (nothing bigger than 40cms either way) and modestly priced artwork directly from the site. I’ve got three small paintings available for now which if you are after a Christmas bargain...? 

'The Way', oil on panel, 30 x 30cms, 2020

Monica thought my work was too cheap, and she’s probably right but it is a hard one to judge as most artists will tell you (I think, but I’m not entirely sure of that- some artists seem to have no qualms about charging a fortune!). However, I would prefer to keep things more modestly priced so people may be more tempted to buy an original painting which I sincerely believe is a wonderful, enriching thing to live with. I have my own small collection of art bought from artists in a similar position to me and I just love having these artworks around me, although I find it very difficult to select things that I think I can live with, but in their own quiet way these artworks add a real richness to one’s life that’s hard to describe.  

Go on, you know you want to...treat yourself, it’s been an awful year...

www.smallworksartgallery.com

The Far Field

oil on canvas, 60 x 80cms, 2020

I spent some time in the late afternoon cleaning up all my brushes after what has been an intense few weeks continuing to work on these paintings based on nearby fields between the town and the motorway. I’ve now made thirteen, of various sizes, with some more larger recent ones.  I see them very much as works in progress as each one I make often has me going back to a previous painting to re-think and re-paint different areas. 

oil on canvas, 120 x 164cms, 2020

I’m enjoying making them but I realised last night as I finished the latest one (above), exhausted, that I feel like I’m creating them with a lot of nervous energy- I mean it seems a bit crazy to have made thirteen in about four weeks- and I seem even more driven than usual. There is also something rather unexpected and a bit unsettling about them that seems to have emerged and that is when I look at the pylons in the paintings I just feel that I am looking at myself and I’m not sure what that’s all about. 

oil on canvas, 75 x 50cms, 2020

I was watching a video lecture by painter Wolf Kahn the other day, who has been a bit of an influence on my approach to painting the trees and hedgerows, where he stated as a painter that 'to know what you are doing is wrong. It's much better to not know what you are doing'. I have to agree and it was a point of view that really chimed with me the other day and a reminder of certain values that come in and out of focus.

oil on canvas, 80 x 100cms, 2020

Kahn was influenced by his teachings by Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman and this movement’s interest in working from the subconscious mind. Although I have spent years working to avoid psychological readings of my work, when it comes to my landscape work I think there’s no running away from it. 

Into The Zone....

oil on canvas, 120 x 60cms, work on progress

 I thought I would try and write today about some new work I’ve been making this week which I feel is the beginning of a more coherent series of new paintings after two quite experimental years of working and attempt to explain some of the context this work is developing out of.

 The work in the last two years, but more especially in recent months, has felt a bit all over the place. The paintings I’ve made recently based on my lockdown walks and appreciation of the nature and the phenomenal spring we experienced in the early days of the pandemic, although I felt compelled to make some work based on this, after a few months I felt the work was hitting a fairly creative dead end.  I want to open up new paths that does include this new focus on nature but also reconcile with my ‘edgelands’ themed interests. I just haven’t quite known how...

'A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields' by Stephen Prince

It’s not insignificant to discuss that bubbling away in my thinking whilst in the studio has been the stuff I’ve been reading, and watching, whilst in lockdown. Most notably the book ‘A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields: Journeys in Otherly Pastoralism, the Further Reaches of Folk and the Parallel Worlds of Hauntology’. by Stephen Prince, which has been a follow on read from Mark Fisher’s ‘The Weird and the Eerie’, with many overlapping themes discussed.

 ‘A Year In The Country’ is a collection of 52 incredibly well-researched chapters, one for each week of the year, that goes in search of the darker, eerier side of nature and the bucolic countryside dream by looking at films of a certain genre, books, TV series and music. It covers everything from folkloric film and literature to electronic music to acid folk to folk horror to the dystopian fiction of John Wyndham and the classic unearthings of Nigel Kneale, to the formation of underground record labels like Trunk, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers. It explores a vast range of avenues to bring together not only a sense of how far reaching and varied the origins, mainstays and current players of genres such as folk horror or hauntology can be, but crucially also how they intertwine and cross pollinate. Each chapter expertly charts its chosen subject’s impact upon the public consciousness as well as indicating that these artefacts are now part of a greater cultural cobweb that may well have threads and components that are radically different in genre or style but that equally have a strong commonality in their sense of unease and their haunted content. Further investigations delve into folklore, TV public information films and the landscape itself as a medium through which a certain mood, an uncanny, can be evoked. 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2020

I think many of these qualities have often been implicit in my own work in landscape painting, although somewhat unconsciously on my part, but remarked upon by my artist friends Andrew Smith and Hugh Marwood, who I have collaborated with. This book  however, has been useful in helping me bring them into sharper focus in recent months to help things move forward. The book has inspired an enormous reading and watching list, and notebooks full of thoughts, and of books, films and TV I’m now trying to seek out. Typically, despite subscriptions to both Netflix, Amazon Prime and the BFI I can’t find hardly any of the films and TV I’m now keen to seek out (the BFI has some).

 As mentioned, the lockdown walks found me wanting to seek a deeper connection with nature in my painting but still keep in my work a connection to my direct experience of living in the outskirts of town on the edge of an estate. Many of my recent paintings before lockdown have tried to evoke an interest in a darker, sometimes uncanny, sense of existence that can live parallel alongside the seemingly ordinary and mundane. They also hold many of my own anxieties about being a parent to a particularly vulnerable child and trying to keep him safe as he grows up and seeks his independence in this environment.  

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, work in progress

I have also been thinking about the teenage memories I carry of the ordinary nature I experienced around me growing up on a council estate in the West Midlands. Our house backed onto a field, which I crossed to secondary school every day, but also crossed in the dark on the way home from the pub or a friend’s house, where it did not feel safe and even foolish to do so. I often did this on canal towpaths too or under the by-way beneath the M5 motorway where I often walked to my friends to rehearse with our band, also crossing a rather dangerous railway line. These places didn’t feel that safe in the day either though. You would often encounter groups of older lads there and suddenly feel very exposed and vulnerable in that field or down that track on your own, the estate where you lived just five minutes away, in sight, but yet feeling suddenly out of reach. I often found myself ‘legging it’ to home, but also on occasion being surrounded by a gang and being roughed up and shoved about, called names and forced to give up anything you might have (which in those days wasn’t much, but these days the technology on our pockets makes us more vulnerable). This sort of experience, in these sorts of places, is really well evoked in Shane Meadows’ film ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ from 2004, which I mentally hold as some sort of marker in my thinking about the landscape and some of these memories.

still from 'A Field In England', directed by Ben Wheatley

The films of director Ben Wheatley are discussed in ‘A Year In The Country’, in particular ‘A Field In England’ set entirely in a field during a day in the English Civil War, which led me to buy and watch it recently. The story deals with a group of army deserters who ‘after ingesting some magic mushrooms fall victim to the powerful psychic energies of the mystical field’. I liked it a lot, not least the beautiful black and white cinematography, but also it explores an idea of the field being like a stage, with many buried past histories and occurrences, where the whole story that unfolds takes place.  I can also see a link to Sergei Tarkovsky’s eerie sci-fi film, ‘Stalker’, which is also discussed by both Fisher and Prince and which I have also recently watched. The film depicts a journey through an enigmatic post-apocalyptic landscape, where hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, apparently a landing by an alien spaceship, where the three men eventually travel to the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires. The film is an adaptation of a science-fiction novel by Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, ‘Roadside Picnic’, which I also recently finished reading. I’m also now reading ‘Zona’ by Geoff Dyer, a very funny and engaging book about the film, examined scene by scene with lots of interesting digressions, and the author’s obsession with it, to complete my experience of it. 

still from 'Stalker', directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979

All of which sort of leads me to these new paintings. Here we are, alone and exposed in an open muddy field occupied by large ominous looking pylons on the edge of a nearby housing estate. The day is turning to dusk, seeking to evoke some of those anxious feelings of being trapped in a place, a zone, surrounded by dark trees as autumn fades to winter, home just in sight but still far away, trying to beat the clock and get home before night descends…

                                                  

oil on canvas, 20 x 20cms, work in progress

I’m developing the paintings using some reference photographs my photographer friend, Laura took on a trip we made to this sight, which is how I’ve often developed earlier series of work based on motorways and canals. The paintings I’m sharing here aren’t quite complete-I would like to add more highlights on the pylons-but are not that far off. It feels really exciting to be working on a series of works again though and the subject matter is helping me push the language of my painting into newer territories that I’m really enjoying too. Most importantly it seems to be helping to coalesce all these ideas, experiences and influences of recent months into a more tangible form…

Morning Way....

'Morning Way', oil on canvas, 75 x 50cms, 2020

The lockdown begins. It’s hard to take in at first and for the first week of it I am unwell with many of the Covid symptons so we all have to self-isolate at home. I’m anxious about us all being thrown together as a family twenty-four seven. Our family life can be stressful at the best of times so how will we cope with this? When news comes that we are allowed a daily hour of exercise we gradually venture out and slot into a daily routine that begins with me walking the dog with one of the children while my wife works from home and tries to also offer some education to the other child left at home.

'Markers In The Ground', oil on canvas, 50 x 75cms, 2020

At first the walks are strange and tense. The long street is empty as we head to the common but if we should happen to see someone coming the other way we hastily cross the road dragging the poor dog behind us. It’s a relief to get to the common and off the road and we head up a winding path up to the canal, walk along there a bit, and head back down towards the stream, cross the bridge, walk the path between tall, thin trees towards that cast long, flickering shadows in the mid-morning sun, towards the road. Crossing the road, we join the path to the Common again, follow the stream, listen and look out for the birds whose song seems to fill the air now the roads are silent, before leaving the Common again, past the large pond the dog loves to jump in, before heading up the steep hill back to our estate. We do this every day for at least 6 weeks.

As Yet Untitled, oil on canvas, 50 x 35cms, 2020

It’s the beginning of April and as the month progresses we witness the spring bring everything to life in abundance in day after day of uncommonly warm sunshine, a blessing of some sort. It’s very joyful and compelling to experience and I try and share it with the children but just below the surface I feel numb and barely able to move. I feel an enormous sense of loss as the days go by and the death toll mounts up out there in the country away, but not that far away, from what now seems our little world of just the four of us trying to get through each long day. When my head hits the pillow I can hardly talk and I try not to think too much about it all, apart from watching the news for 10 minutes I find myself avoiding it as much as possible. I’m just trying to get on with it. I find I can’t get to sleep most nights. 

'The Trees', oil on canvas, 75 x 50cms each canvas, 2020

I start taking photographs on our walks of the trees, the hedgerows and pathways through the wooded edgelands and send them off to be printed. I start making experimental digital studies from them on my tablet that I’m excited by and attempt to make some paintings based on them. I feel compelled to capture something of my mental state during this period in some strange way before it slips away and we head to who knows where. I’m already sort of mourning the loss of the loss and what felt like some sort of weird and precious time we experienced as a family that feels like it is slipping away already.

As yet untitled, oil on canvas, 150 x 120cms, 2020

So, despite the paintings, with their images of a heady, bucolic natural world, seemingly going off in what on the surface may seem like an unexpected direction I’m beginning to see how they are still connected to my interest in hauntology and lost futures and are an opportunity to expand my ideas much further…