...and

…and I came home tonight to an e-mail from Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery offering me a solo exhibition of my paintings after an application to them that I recently made! They are offering me a slot from mid January to March 2014 in their White Gallery, which can house up to 50 average sized pieces. I’m thrilled. And how gratifying it feels to be offered a show instead of having to organize one myself for a change, but above all of that how gratifying it is that they wanted to.  I’d better get busy. It could be the just the opportunity I’ve been seeking to create some really large paintings…some more big stuff…and strange and fitting that it will be scheduled just at the end of my Arts Council funding.

Stepping Out...

 

'Sleep', oil on canvas, 150 x 180cms (selected for Worcester Contemporary 2013)

I was delighted to hear today that two of my paintings have been selected for the Worcester Contemporary Open 2013 exhibition, which opens on July 13^th at Worcester City Art Gallery. I’m delighted because the exhibition has been approached differently this year with the entrants being purely selected instead of just the previous free for all which had two strands to it: a selected exhibition (the winners), and basically another show that exhibits everyone else (the losers). I’ve always ended up in the dangerous ‘everyone else’ losers pile before, and after last time decided I wouldn’t bother again. It doesn’t do your work any favours to end up in this other show.  But with this year’s change of format and some of high profile selectors from the region, I thought I would try again. And this year I won. Hurrah.

'Silence' oil canvas, 100 x 120cms (selected for the Worcester Contemporary Open 2013)

I’ve also been approached by an artist’s group from Nottingham in the last couple of weeks to participate in an ‘Edgelands’ themed exhibition they are curating in a new artist’s run space in the city. One of the artists, photographer Sian Stammers, came across my paintings on the internet, I think from the labels on the blog posts, and asked if I would be interested, and then took my work to the rest of the group who have also agreed they would like my work to be part of their project. This is a really exciting development, and will take place in October.  It will be great to meet and work with some other artists from outside the region. The exhibition itself was also inspired by the Simmonds-Roberts and Farley ‘Edgelands’ book, which seems to have caught a fire in many ways since it’s publication, and now I’m on board Sian suggested the idea of exploring where the fringes of the East Midlands meet the fringes of the West. I can’t wait, and am meeting Sian in a couple of weeks when she will be visiting the studio.

All this is more exciting than the experience of exhibiting at the Park View Gallery in recent weeks. How come I end up exhibiting my work at the only commercial gallery that asks me for advice about selling work? That’s their job isn’t it? Perhaps telling people that my work is actually there via the website, or at least your Facebook page may be an idea…Oh well, and on we go.

Other Notes: I’ve become really into Pinterest in the last few weeks: the online pinboards where you share your passions with others in the online ether. Whereas other people seem to have all sorts of weird and wonderful boards and themes, my passions seem to somewhat predictably just centre around painting. After initially being keen to just start an ‘edgelands’ themed board as a bit of ‘research’, I’ve now got seven painting inspired boards on the go. In many ways it seems like a bit of a game or nice distraction, and I find myself quietly addicted.  Here’s a link:

http://pinterest.com/shaundmorris/boards/

http://www.worcesteropen.co.uk/

Painting

This is a new painting I’ve completed (I think) in the last few days. I wanted to post it at the end of what has been a productive month in the studio, with the beginnings of some new edgelands inspired work such as this, and the new drawings.

In case you are wondering what this unusual image represents, it’s a group of parked HGV lorries reflected in the canal at night. The painting has been developed from a recent photograph, and I was attracted to the image’s formal, abstract arrangement. It reminded me of earlier Modernist paintings such as those by William Scott, or some of the St Ives painters. Only grittier. The canal, not the sea.

It was also painted differently, built up and rubbed back down to an underpainted bright red ground, which is something I’ve not done in a long time, preferring to work from white up. Making the pastels on coloured paper grounds lead me to try this, and I’ve really enjoyed rubbing back the paint to reveal the red, as much as applying the paint itself. It gives the painting a deeper lustre and depth, although that’s not that apparent in this photograph. It’s good not to cling too tightly to habits of working…

The Visitor

‘This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of my brother, Stuart Morris, 1972-2009.’

This was something I’d added to my introduction to ‘Stolen Car’ on Saturday.

I had just greeted a few friends, who had arrived for the afternoon private view, when a visitor to the show, a fairly elderly man in glasses, came out of the gallery and approached me holding the printed introduction.

‘So how did you brother die?’ he asked.

‘He died of cancer,’ I replied, although somewhat taken aback.

‘The paintings are very dark…..is that related?’

‘Well….they represent the night that he died and my memories of that. This is where I was the night he died as I went to see him for the last time. I was driving under these motorways, which I’ve known all my life, to his house just beyond’.

He looked at me.

‘It’s such a vivid memory…’

‘Of course….’

‘…..and ever since I’ve felt compelled to record my memories of that night in some way. I’ve thought about writing about it, or something like that, just for myself…but anyway…I mean I’ve tried painting about my feelings in lots of other ways but not really come close, it was only once I’d painted about the fifth of these motorway paintings that it struck me that here I was, telling the story of that night. It was quite a shock, but there you go. It can happen like that’.

‘They are certainly powerful pictures’,

‘Thanks. I’m glad you think so.’

‘Do you mind if I take it with me?’ he asked, waving the introduction in his hand.

‘No, no, please do…’

As he went merrily on his way, I was feeling slightly dazed. I was left wondering, how come I ended up telling all that to a complete stranger? 

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.