The Hours....

oil on panel study, 8 " x 10", current work

I hobble down the long garden to the studio on my crutches each morning, the dog faithfully following me, hoping I will throw the ball, jump precariously up the step into the space, set up my speaker and Bluetooth to either some music (this week: ‘Here It Is- A Tribute to Leonard Cohen (I can’t recommend this enough), and ‘Communication’ by Karl Bartos, former Kraftwerk member, whose 600 page autobiography I’ve just completed (brilliant read) or a Podcast ( lately lots of ‘The Rest Is Politics’ with Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, and my favourite a new run of The Adam Buxton Podcast), and climb up on my high stool to the desk easel, palette and paints set up on the high table, take another reference photo as a starting point, and a fresh, primed small painting panel, and then set to work for a few hours. Once I’m actually safely in the studio it feels like the only thing I can do that easily at the moment, but as it’s painting, that’s not so bad is it? 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current 

In fact, I’ve been painting 2-3 paintings a day these last two weeks and I’m really enjoying it. As I can only work sitting down, I’m forced to work small, but these limits are liberating. As most my paintings start from primary reference photographs but against the limits of time, I’m enjoying the opportunity to dig a lot deeper into these photographs and try and unearth some new ideas, particularly in the ongoing development of my painting language, experimenting, always experimenting. 

oil on panel study, 8" x 10", current

oil on panel study, 8"x10", current

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current

At the moment, I’m hooking into something much 

looser, more abstract, but not abstract, and continually thinking about my use of colour and the light in the paintings. These elements have become much more central in the last 2 years to how I concieve the paintings. I’ve made some new motorway studies, which are dynamic and offer some nice ideas for compositions, but also some new studies of the local woodlands and the common which have a very different feel, and present more difficulties in a way, in trying to do something more original with scenes like these, but I remain committed to both subjects. I’m just playing around, making stuff and trying not to over think it at the moment. 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current

I’m thinking about doing some portraits and still lives next week….

Audience Feedback....Birmingham Open Studios 2022

Studio view

I welcomed visitors to my studio last weekend as a participating artist in the Birmingham Open Studios event across the city (although most of the artists participating seem to be based in South Birmingham, my neck of the woods). I enjoyed it. Friends and strangers came, and I enjoyed discussing my work and sharing my studio space. It had been a bit difficult to tidy too much with me being on crutches, but at the same time I didn’t really want to: if I was a visitor I would have enjoyed looking ‘behind the scenes’ of the artist and the work. So comments were made about my large, unruly palette, what paints I used, the canvasses in preparation and the many, many brushes. 

I also talked a lot about the subject matter too: my conviction in looking in ‘your own backyard’ for inspiration. I had chosen to display paintings based in Kings Heath where I live to emphasise this and thinking they may have local interest-and also about the importance of just trying to make the work you felt you needed to make without thinking too much about an audience, as this is where problems can often lie. These are conversations I started at art school, and never really go away. Of course, you are just making the art you need to make. And yet…it would be a bit disingenuous to say mental notes are not taken of comments that are made, observing what paintings seem to ‘land’, which postcards sold, and which do not. But at the end of the day, from my experience, these things are entirely unpredictable. Every viewer brings something of themselves as to why they may be attracted to a certain piece. These things are certainly not universal, so it's best to carry on regardless.

'Grounded II', oil on canvas, 40 x 30cms, 2021

Many of the visitors to the studio had found their way there attracted by my painting of the car in snow that had been in the brochure (above) That was a surprise to me, although I have always been pleased with this piece and another that accompanied it (below). I sold both and could have sold that first one three times over. 

'Grounded III', oil on canvas, 60 x 50cms, 2021

Postcards for sale ( a new thing...)

I also sold a small studio still life and a small ‘lorry park’ landscape. I also sold an etching (these are now becoming consistently popular at exhibitions), and nearly all of the postcards I had made, What a good idea these were…

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