New Painting 17

oil on canvas, 60 x 30cms, 2016

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? 

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

Nice One...

'Dagenham', 

Jock MacFadyen, oil on canvas, 152x 270cms, 

I liked this I came across by art writer Karen Wright's  account of her studio visit with the painter Jock McFadyen:

Jock McFadyen’s East End studio is infused with the heady perfume of paint and turps. Painting, now seemingly the least fashionable of arts, is literally getting up my nose here. When I ask McFadyen if he minds practising the art form seemingly not at the forefront of chic curating, his defence is instantaneous and robust: “The great thing about painting is that it’s not fashionable.”

I ask if he always wanted to be an artist, and his response illuminates the current divide in art. “I don’t want to be an artist. I want to be a painter. The man in the street might think you make art out of dirt and string. It is embarrassing to be an artist.”

There’s something in that…I’m a painter, too. 

'Hoy',

Jock MacFadyen,oil on canvas, 115 x 173cms