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/