Boiled Eggs and Nuts....

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Boston Cremes', oil on canvas, 38 x 38inches , 1961

I’m at home recovering from an operation on my ankle. I have a huge, supportive boot on my right foot, and I can only walk with the aid of crutches which are used to help me to ‘hop’ around. I feel pretty helpless. This is harder than I thought it would be. 

I will be off work for a staggering 3 months, which is appealing- lots of books to read, films and TV to watch, bass guitar to learn and practice, and of course hopefully some art, but I have yet to figure out quite how yet, but it has only been 2 days since the op….but as usual this is the first thing on my mind…

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Luncheon', oil on canvas, 2010, 38 x 38inches

A big monograph on artist Wayne Thiebaud, a favourite painter, arrived today. As I look through the beautiful reproductions I’m struck by the many formal similarities and interests we share across our respective work: the carefully considered compositions where everything is in the right place with a lot of repetitive shapes and forms; an unfussy, almost flat-footed, but always closely observed, treatment of form; a sense of the whole without skimping on the details; the physical handling of the paint itself, the drag, the pull and the push in the brushwork. And finally, the colour and the light which holds all these elements together. These are qualities I really enjoy in the paintings and painters I return to, and continually try to explore in my own work. I’ve learned a lot about harnessing and appreciating these things from artists such as Thiebaud.  

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Cold Case', oil on canvas, 48 x 60inches, 2010-13

I’m also struck today when looking at the work afresh by Thiebaud’s continued interest in depicting the same small range of subject matter over a 70 year or more career: the cakes and pastries; the gumball machines; shoes, jackets and deadpan portraits that best represent the tense, spare yet stagey compositions he is most associated with. The colour is all in the objects themselves and their shadows, with very little colour in the background and the surfaces the objects sit in. These are mostly white. 

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Towards 280,' oil on canvas, 54 x 60in, 1999-2000

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Winding River', acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60inches, 2002

 And then there are the expansive, freer paintings of landscapes which seem a counter to the still lives and portraits. These depict cityscapes of San Francisco and the landscape of Sacramento, California where he lived and worked. They are complex spatial arrangements with their snaking and looping freeways, glistening lakes and valleys; patterned fields and gridded streets. There exist distorted games with perspective in the skyscrapers, architecture and trees, often intermingling in unexpected ways. And then huge slabs of Californian mountainside look just like extreme close-ups of the heavily iced cakes in the other works. I like this bounce between. 

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Canyon Mountains', oil on canvas, 66 x 54 inches, 2011-12

The same subjects are explored endlessly, Thiebaud never getting bored with finding multiple ways to skin the same cat, yet also, despite such a long career (he died aged 101), they are painted very consistently. It’s hard to tell a cake painted in 1963 apart from one painted in 2013. 

I find this reassuring today as I think about my own painting, particularly my landscapes. Although in my own painting there is a large range of landscapes that have now accrued over time there is a consistent tone and approach to the work, and despite different excursions into other areas I keep returning to these few core ideas that repeat across the work: the street scenes at night; the motorways and bridges; canals and local woods; the fields of pylons and the many depictions of different cars and vans. 

Shaun Morris, 'Late Night Delivery', oil on canvas, 90 x 120cms, 2022

Like Thiebaud and so many painters, this seems to be the tradition I find myself in when I occasionally take the time to step back a bit to reflect. In small, incremental ways it seems over the last 20 years I've busy creating a painted world that seems to be becoming more distinctly mine but based on a world observed and very much outside of me.  Although this recognition feels fairly positive, maybe this forced time off will help me think about these issues a bit more carefully, as one always hopes to also keep moving forward too... 

 

Summer's Almost Gone....

 

'Ice Cream Wars', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2022

It’s the end of the summer holidays…I’m back at work, my children return to school next week. I always feel slightly wistful as we all go our separate ways again as another summer break draws to a close, which for most parents I think, but definitely for this one, can be pretty exhausting. Yet each summer seems a keen marker of time as the kids grow up so quickly. 

 

This new painting that I’ve been working on this week is based on observations I’ve made of a burnt-out ice cream van on the Moseley Road, just 200 yards from the college I work at. It seemed like a real gift of a subject and an image to work with as I drove down late at night to photograph it, having spied it on my journey to and from work. It also seems to perfectly capture something of those end of summer blues, but also seems pretty loaded in other multiple ways, particularly in the current political and social climate of the UK. 

 

In the studio this week

Anyway, I LOVED painting it over a few late nights this week with some current listening in the studio of Yo La Tengo’s ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’ and Miles Davis’ ‘In A Silent Way’. All new, but very exciting, listening to me. Through this large 4 x 5ft piece I feel a bit more energised about my painting again too. Although I have worked, as ever I guess, steadily and consistently in the studio this year, I have also struggled to feel that excited about what I’ve been doing and also feel it has been a bit all over the place. I’ve painted over as many paintings as I’ve made, feeling very unsatisfied. I’d like to write about some of this in a few more posts, but for now I thought I would say hello again from the present as I’ve not written in ages. ...

Bigger portions....

 

oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2021

Since completing the paintings on black grounds I wrote about in the last post, which were rather modest in scale, I thought it might be nice to try and make some nice, large paintings again. This arose out of having one of my small Spaghetti Junction paintings that I made some months ago on my living room wall. Contemplating it over several days I realised it looked more like a study for a bigger painting and that it’s more abstract quality of bold, painterly shapes, geometric forms and colour combinations could look really exciting on a much bigger scale. So in the last three weeks that’s just what I’ve done: I enlarged 2 of the smaller paintings, or ‘studies’, and made 2 4ft x 5ft paintings that I’m really excited about.

oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2021

I had great fun painting both of them, particularly the first one (above) which was a simpler composition and was almost a direct translation of the smaller painting it is based on. The second one was much more exhausting to do, and had a lot more to consider in terms of colour relationships, the mark-making on this scale and trying to depict the complicated spatial areas that exist across it. Basically, all of it really!

 But I think it was worth it, as I’m really pleased with them, and it’s great to bring some bolder colour into the studio and create some paintings that are more abstract and dynamic. It's also exciting to see some of the work I've been experimenting with since the start of the year start to develop into some more coherent paintings. 

Tomorrow Ends Today...

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

My experience on Sky Arts Landscape Artist Of The Year and the practice work I made before competing has lead me to experiment quite extensively with painting on different toned grounds, including yellows, pinks, violets, blues and also black for several months now. For years I have always painted directly onto a white, primed surface liking the luminous quality this brings to the colour.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

Painting on these toned grounds, however has been really interesting, particularly the black grounds which seemed to create an unsettling atmospheric quality I recently explored in greater depth over a series of more than 10 paintings. I used a more reduced colour palette with these paintings too as a reaction to the Spaghetti Junction paintings I’d been making where I thought I was getting a bit silly with the colour.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

The paintings in this series started out being based on some of the reference photographs I made many years ago with my photographer friend Laura’s help of the landscape beneath a small stretch of the M5 just outside West Bromwich. These photographs were then used to inform my first motorway paintings and a more serious foray into landscape painting.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

When I made those original paintings I realised on completion that they were in some way an expression of my grief at the death of my younger brother, Stu who lived near to this place, a place where I was also born and knew very well growing up. It was also the place I travelled through on my last visit to see him on the night that he finally died of cancer aged just 36. Unsurprisingly, it’s a night that is forever deeply etched in my memory.  So I felt some trepidation in revisiting these photographs, but there still seemed rich material in them that might lend themselves to working on these black grounds….

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

I made 5 paintings before I felt I had used all I could from these old photographs and it would also be better to go back now, 11 years later, and see the landscape with fresh eyes and take some new photographs to work from.  

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

So, again with Laura, who also taught me how to use my new digital camera to take my own night time photographs, we went back and got some great new material, including some images of the flats just beyond the motorway which seemed very evocative. 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

I then completed with renewed energy another five paintings before deciding that was enough for now.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

I did find myself transported back to that evening and completing the work felt intense and urgent, so I wanted to stop. I see the paintings not as individual pieces but as one, detailing a final journey for both of us that night….   

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

'Displaced' at T Street Gallery, Birmingham

 

I'm pleased to announce details of a forthcoming exhibition I am taking part in with my artist friend Andrew Smith. ‘Displaced’ opens next week at Birmingham’s T Street Gallery, an alternative art gallery just on the edge of the city centre. The exhibition has been curated by the gallery director, Sev, who has selected works from both of us. Interestingly, I approached the gallery with my work last year after visiting the excellent Carolyn Blake exhibition of paintings, ‘Space and Place’, there and meeting Sev. I then told Andrew about it and he visited himself, met Sev, and also sent in his work. Several months later Sev got in touch and asked if I would be interested in a two-person exhibition with another artist? I said ‘the other artist isn’t Andrew Smith is it?’ to which the answer was yes! I’m telling the story because Andrew and I have collaborated in a few exhibitions now that we have organised ourselves with other artists in the last ten years, so it was a nice thing that someone else chose to put us together this time with no idea of our shared history. It’s also a nice change that Sev has entirely selected the work to exhibit from both us and I will be showing a mixture of new paintings and some older ones too, including some of my trucks. It will be interesting to see different works from different periods or series of work rubbing shoulders with each other. I’m really excited. We will be installing on Wednesday and opening on Thursday. Here’s the press statement below from the gallery and a link to the website….

T Street is re-opening its doors with new exhibition 'Displaced'-

Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year (2021) participant Shaun Morris and fellow Birmingham based artist Andrew Smith come together in this joint exhibition to explore works that question our concepts of space and emotion.​

Over the past year, the notion of space/non-space, our surroundings and our interactions have become displaced from normality. We've been forced to reflect upon our relationships with areas and places we've been isolated to and enclosed in and how our methods of communications connect or disconnect.​

Displaced is an exhibition of works by Andrew and Shaun that invites the audience to perceive and reflect upon these concepts.

https://www.sevvenkucuk.com/tstreetgallery

Travelling through...

 

still from 'Nomadland' directed by Chloe Zhao

I watched ‘Nomadland’ the other night. It was a very moving film. It depicts those in America living out of the back of their RV’s (vans to you and me), not homeless but ‘houseless’, travelling across the country, stopping at places such as a giant Amazon warehouse for seasonal work to earn some money before heading out on the road again. The ‘nomads’ would often meet other nomads in the middle of the desert forming a large community for a while to share their experiences and not be so alone, to belong somewhere, if only for a while. Many, many people live like this in modern America and elsewhere, particularly since the financial crash of 2008, eking out a precarious existence. It’s a film that really reflects the times we live in where none of the old certainties exist anymore: no secure work, no affordable place to live, no welfare safety net. The film was also accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack by Ludovico Einaudi.

'Canary Wharf, Dark Blue' painting by Jock MacFadyen

I’m very interested in these themes about the precariousness of modern life that exists for huge swathes of society, be it here in the UK or other parts of the world as we struggle to survive in the very tight grip of neoliberal, authoritarian forces.  I go seeking out how it is reflected and explored in the culture I absorb too, from watching films like ‘Nomadland’ and Ken Loach’s recent ‘Sorry I Missed You’, to reading the novels of Willy Vlautin or James Kelman, and more recently the excellent ‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart. Ever since my early days as an art student I found myself attracted to the idea of trying to do something about the culture, a working class, often denigrated culture, that I grew up in and surrounded me in West Bromwich that still remains. I remember my first encounters with the paintings of Jock MacFadyen having a profound impact on me as a student because they seemed so close to not only the geographical landscape of my hometown but the psychological, inner landscape too.  They were affirming in that maybe my culture had some value, did actually exist, and made a deep connection with me that I struggled to find in the paintings we studied at college and with the lives of my fellow, more middle class and confident students who were so much more art aware. They still do. I often reflect that I was lucky to find a tutor on my Art Foundation Course from a similar background to mine, only from Birkenhead near Liverpool. He encouraged my early paintings of the Black Country and supported me to follow this route. I’m really not sure what would have happened to me otherwise. I felt like a fish out of water for a long time. All any of us need is a bit of encouragement but it can often be hard to find at art college.

'A New England', oil canvas, 100 x 168cms, 2021 ( a new painting by me)

Watching ‘Nomadland’ was a reminder and affirmation of how much I still want my own work in painting to reflect the world around me and have its own place within this culture of films, books, television, painting and sculpture that deals with the realities of everyday life in the mundane and the ordinary, the overlooked and neglected, often set against a landscape haunted by post-industrial ruins and history. I need reminding sometimes, because through the continual drip, drip, drip of social media, particularly my Instagram feed, I’m reminded by the painters of the English countryside and more palatable scenes of everyday life that I follow, and like and admire I must say, I could be doing things very differently and reaching a much wider audience. But that’s not what I’m doing. I don’t live in the Cotswolds, or in the hills and valleys, or by the coast. I live near the Sainsbury’s where the factory used to be and that feels more authentic to me….

Here are a few of those cultural touchstones, with some links if you want to delve deeper, that have influenced my work over the years:

‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’, album by Bruce Springsteen

https://thequietus.com/articles/29779-bruce-springsteen-shut-the-fuck-up-brixton

‘Fast Food Nation’ book by Eric Schlosser

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/07/features.weekend

‘The Afterglow’ book by Anthony Cartwright

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/05/anthony-cartwright-interview-killed-thatcher

The paintings of Jock McFadyen

‘Not Not While The Giro’ book of short stories by James Kelman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igD60IYADsY

‘The Jungle’ book by Upton Sinclair

https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-jungle

‘You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To’ album by Richmond Fontaine

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/richmond-fontaine-willy-vlautin-post-to-wire-you-can-t-go-back-if-there-s-nothing-to-go-back-to-a7369296.html

‘The Motel Life’ book by Willy Vlautin

https://medium.com/@brianrowe_70270/falling-for-willy-vlautin-and-the-motel-life-77b9f9aeefe

A Marvelous Activity

 

'Livin' On The Edge Of The World', oil on canvas, 80 x 100cms, 2021

I sometimes think of doing other things, but actually it’s much more interesting to paint. It is just a marvellous activity that humans have invented…’

Frank Auerbach, 2015, who celebrated his 90^th birthday yesterday on the 29^th April. He probably celebrated by painting…

 

oil on canvas, 40 x 50cms, 2021

 I’ve made an awful lot of paintings since the beginning of the year. I’m normally fairly productive given the limits on my time I have in my role as a parent and lecturer, but these last few months have seen me continually painting, almost as if time is running out. Maybe it’s an age thing, maybe it’s the pandemic forcing me to be at home, where my studio is, more, maybe it’s both of these things. Sometimes it seems increasingly all I ever want to do and all I am capable of doing.

oil on canvas, 40 x 50cms, 2021

In the last two months I’ve made a return to looking at motorways and their surrounding landscape, making some paintings based on photographs I took at Spaghetti Junction, a place I’ve avoided in my paintings of motorways, largely because of the extremeness of the scale of its architecture and its notoriety. It seemed almost a cliché of a motorway, a futuristic highway from a J G Ballard novel, whose writing I have never actually read but have been encouraged to by others over the years. I found it all a bit off-putting as this is not where my interests were at the time. 

oil on canvas, 40 x 50cms, 2021

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

Yet despite the vast scale of the architecture of Spaghetti Junction the paintings I have made so far have surprisingly ended up being on a small scale. I have made two larger paintings, but at 80 x 100cms, they are relatively modest. They have taken much longer to make, whereas working on the smaller paintings have enabled me to keep moving rather than working on one painting for longer. It has helped me to keep trying out more images and get more momentum going which is one of the reasons I’ve been able to do so much lately. There is also something about the size of the mark in relation to the image on the smaller scale that excites me as well as the paintings appearing more intimate in relation to their subject matter.    

'Zona', oil on canvas, 100 x 80cms, 2021

However, after making the 3 small ones shared here I made two more, slightly bigger ones, where I felt I was becoming a bit unstuck with my use of colour. They were just too, well, colourful and a bit sweet, as well as spatially very complex, so I have turned my attention to some different work for now which I’ll share in my next post.

Here’s a link to a nice interview with Frank Auerbach in the link below (he makes better colour choices than me):

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/16/frank-auerbach-when-paint-fantastic-time-lots-girls