Comments Book...

‘You would never have thought that Romance and Modernism would go together but this exhibition proves that they can. I will never look at motorways in the same way again. Wonderful!’

That was a very pleasing comment left in the comments book at the exhibition, where I have spent the day. Here’s another:

‘What a load of old rubbish in Gallery One’.

Just in case I was going to let things go to my head…!

I’m pleased with the show anyway. It feels good to reflect on the work a bit. I feel after about four years of different attempts and false starts, I’ve finally created my first serious body of landscape painting, which not only am I pretty pleased with, but, despite the numerous influences that bubble away under the surface, actually feels like it belongs to me.

 I decided to frame a few of my charcoal and pastel drawings and some small oil paintings on paper, with the hope that it may appeal more widely and be more accessible in terms of price and scale- and it worked! I sold three of them, which helped cover some of my costs. I don’t make things easy for myself in terms of any commercial value in my work, I just make the work I need to do, but the drawings are an important part of my process, and I felt they looked lovely framed up, so I need to heed this lesson and make more and try and get them out to some commercial galleries. I think they will appeal in a way the paintings just never will.

 Ironically, I felt the only painting that didn’t work in the show was the large trees one that I used on the flyers and posters! I discussed this with someone on Saturday, who felt that the smaller one next to it’s ‘clenched’ energy was far more successful. I have to say I tend to agree. I had previously done a different large version of this that I rejected for this show, but think I made the wrong choice in selecting the larger piece. Oh well, some you win…which takes me back to the comments at the top.

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.