'The highway is alive tonight...'

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Grown men and women wept as he announced that they were to play the seminal ‘Born To Run’ album in its entirety as a tribute to their late friend James Gandolfini. I could hardly believe what I was seeing and hearing as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band launched into ‘Thunder Road’ last night as the evening light faded over Coventry’s Ricoh Stadium, and the band went onto play every track in sequence from one of the greatest rock n roll records ever made in what was a an absolutely spectacular performance: it was so intense and immersive, as powerful as it gets, and this was about a third of the way into a concert where we had already enjoyed about twelve surprising, jaw-dropping tracks made up largely of audience requests.  There was magic in the Midlands air and then some. 

Peculiarly, from the opening ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’, sung by Bruce alone with just acoustic guitar and harmonica for company, with it’s line, ‘the highway is alive tonight’ to the rarely performed ‘Seeds’ to ‘Death To My Hometown’, I felt there was something in the evolving setlist that reflected Bruce and the band’s date with the Midlands and it’s post-industrial landscape, not dissimilar to Bruce’s own Jersey Shore, that reflected some sort of knowledge of the history of the area on the part of Bruce (if you look at the Glasgow setlist from a couple of nights previously you can see this too). It’s been often reported how he sometimes gives large charitable donations to deserving community organisations that he seeks out in the many cities visited by the band.

With a set that eventually totaled over three hours and where your every care and worry feels lifted from your shoulders as you holler along, raise your arms, dance with everyone around you as people did where I was last night, and a staggering 31 songs played I know I will never experience a concert, an event, an experience like this again, as you head out into the night afterwards feeling ten feet tall, grinning ear to ear, happy and high. It’s why I keep coming back for more. Long may Bruce and the E Street band continue…. 

An Introduction to 'Stolen Car'...

When I originally started to develop these drawings and paintings of motorways I held in my mind Bruce Springsteen’s song, ‘Stolen Car’ as a sort of ‘working title’ and guide to the emotional tone I wanted to evoke. It’s a particularly sad and mournful song that deals with the emotional isolation of the song’s narrator as he reflects on memories of his past life and his crumbling relationship. In an admittedly clichéd way I imagined him driving this ‘stolen car’ underneath these motorways, or parked up in silence, or listening to some late night radio show, in his mind walking ‘the thin line between stability and that moment when time stops and everything goes to black’, in the same way that Springsteen has written about his bleaker songs, ‘When the things that connect you to your world- your job, your family, friends, your faith, the love and grace in your heart- fail you.’ It’s a feeling I’ve experienced, and I’m sure one we all have to one degree or another, at times along the way, and I have often found myself in this location, underneath the M5 just outside West Bromwich, my hometown, walking with just my thoughts for company, in an attempt to deal with the feelings that can often seem all consuming.  Sometimes you just need to keep walking or keep driving.

As this series of works has developed over the last eighteen months, that working title has stuck and here it is now committed as the title for this exhibition. It still seems apt, as that song and Bruce’s words and music, with its obsession with cars and highways and their metaphoric use for broken relationships and forgotten or lost dreams, has formed a continual backdrop in the studio as I’ve attempted to create my first serious body of landscape work. What started as an interest in exploring formal concerns in painting, and in depicting the so-called ‘edgelands’ of landscape, the nowhere zone between city and countryside, I grew up in, has developed quite unexpectedly into a body of work that steps out of the shadows of the dark and hidden passages and surrounding bridges, and cast by the lights that often appear out of reach, and more about the mental ‘edgelands’ I often occupy, as I find myself mapping a different sort of terrain altogether.

Shaun Morris

February 2013

'Stolen Car', charcoal on paper, 50 x 70cms, 2011

Smell The Glove...!

It’s February already (I had hoped to write a lot more in January but I've been too busy to really think about it), and this coming Friday I will be hanging my exhibition at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery with a private view on Saturday afternoon. So without any further ado people, here it is- ‘Smell The Glove!’ Sorry, wrong reference..! Here is the press release and the flyer (above) that Chris Cowdrill has created for me as part of Indigo Octagon Projects. 

I decided to promote the exhibition as an Indigo Octagon Project as a way of nurturing the project further, and also with the intention of collaborating with other artists to try and add a different depth and texture to the exhibition than if I was just doing it on my own. Chris has designed a great pamphlet created from some photographs I’d taken and images of the paintings, which will be available for a nominal fee at the exhibition, and artist/writer Andrew Smith has written a terrific essay about the work . This is a piece of writing based on his own personal response to the work and conversations we have had. I will be also posting this on the blog, together with an introduction to the exhibition that I have written. For now though, this is the press release: 

                          Press Release

Stolen Car

New paintings by Shaun Morris

At Floor One Gallery, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum,

Little Elborow Street, Rugby CV21 3BZ

Tel: 01788 533201 E: ragm@rugby.gov.uk

Sat 9^th February to Thursday 21st February 2013

West Midlands based painter, Shaun Morris is pleased to present ‘Stolen Car’, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings based on his nocturnal observations of the underside of the M5 motorway that circles the edges and borders of his native West Bromwich and Birmingham.

The work on display represent the artist’s first serious collection of landscape painting, and reflect his interest in depicting the so-called ‘edgelands’: the forgotten, overlooked, nowhere zones that exist between the city or town and the countryside. Feeling and experience are held in these vivid images that represent an individual and personal vision from this emerging artist, and his close relationship to this rarely represented landscape.

These large and dramatic paintings, which were created from studies made at night, invite us into a half-seen world where shards of the surrounding landscape are illuminated by the sodium lights that spill from the enormous, looming structures of the motorway above. The black shapes that represent the concrete pillars holding up these giant roads, serve to break up the picture surface and create a dynamic visual tension between dark and light, abstraction and realism, depth and flatness. The space depicted often appears ambiguous: one is not sure whether the space is positive or negative, where the structures, devoid of all detail, can at once appear solid but simultaneously appear as openings, or doors, into a depthless and unknown world.

You are warmly invited to the Private View on Saturday 9^th February 2013 from 1-3pm, where there will be refreshments and an opportunity to meet the artist. There is an accompanying booklet designed by artist Chris Cowdrill, with an essay by artist and writer Andrew Smith. This exhibition is supported by Indigo Octagon Projects and by funding from Arts Council England. 

2012- This Much I Know...

At the end of 2012, this much I know….

I’d prefer to define myself as a painter than an artist.

I only really enjoy painting: appreciating it, doing it, learning about it (and some sculpture). Most contemporary art has little interest for me, despite continued attempts to engage with it over the years. But that seems a fair position. It’s like expecting a football fan to like all sports other than his beloved football.

There is great value in working in a specialized field like painting. It’s important to measure yourself against and understand it’s traditions and history, while avoiding being too reactionary. It seems to have more value than floating around the abundance of choices available to the contemporary artist who inevitably ends up not really having a deep relationship with anything. You do not find any other type of artist, such as writers, film-makers, or poets working like this. There is so little time to do it all!

I’ve learned more about painting in the art criticism of contemporary Welsh painter Merlin James than anyone else.

It’s ok to use photographs to support my own painting.

The influence of Gerhard Richter’s paintings from photographs really get in the way of most modern painters exploration of the relationship between photography and painting. If you want to learn more about the possibilities of photography and painting you would be best to look at an artist like Walter Sickert. He was much more creative and forward thinking.

Richter’s lack of compassion is rather sad and poses many problems in contemporary painting not found in art forms such as literature, theatre and film.

Working in collaboration has stretched and challenged me much more than working on my own. I would like to do more of it in 2013.

I feel I work in a very narrow way most of the time, yet I continue to find myself in new and unexpected situations. And that is just when I walk through the studio door. 

The fact that it is not an embarrassment to me that most paintings I’ve made this year are inspired by the mood evoked in a Bruce Springsteen song  says much about my love and respect for the man and his music.

‘Wrecking Ball’ by Springsteen is probably my album of the year. Bruce live at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester is definitely my gig of the year.

I’ve got my tickets for Bruce at Coventry Ricoh Stadium in June 2013. You should too.

I love Bob Dylan’s music with a passion, but I didn’t understand the fuss about this year’s ‘Tempest’ album (and who does those dreadful sleeves? The same artist that sourced Bob’s China paintings on Flikr?)

My experience in Norway taught me to always listen to people, especially when you can’t hear them speaking

My experience in Denmark with my friends reminded me to keep taking risks. More importantly they reminded that it’s not the small things that matter, just the details...

I hope that this doesn’t read too much like something I may have found in a Christmas cracker this season….but I feel like it does!

 Happy New Year!