Shaun Morris: 'A Little Bit Back From The Main Road', At Evesham Arts Centre

Shaun Morris, 'The Street (The Ship)', Oil On Canvas, 2018

The Half Term break from my school employment afforded me time to set my own work aside for a few guilt-free hours, the other day; and so I pootled over to Evesham, to see the latest exhibition of work by my friend, Shaun Morris.

‘Just A Little Bit Back From The Main Road’ is a relatively small display, in the cafe/bar area of Evesham’s dinky little Arts Centre (which is itself an annex of the town’s Prince Henry’s School), but Shaun has done well to squeeze a significant selection of his recent paintings onto a single wall, without it all appearing distractingly cramped.  Whilst taking them in, it occurred to me that he’s pretty diligent about sniffing out venues, (of whatever profile) and consistently seizing opportunities to show work in a variety of contexts.  It certainly makes my own rather more diffident exhibiting history feel a bit lazy in comparison, which is definitely something to think about.  And Shaun’s determination seems to have borne fruit in recent months, in terms of a few notable sales, and the attentions of at least one collector, in recent months - I believe.

Shaun Morris, 'A Little Bit Back From The Main Road', Evesham Arts Centre,  June 2018

I’ve had a connection with Shaun and his work for some years now, and always take an interest in what he’s been up to. I’d seen many of the new paintings on his website, but this was my first chance to see them properly, and to enjoy the materiality of Shaun’s consistently impressive paint handling skills.  I had another ulterior motive, as he, Andrew Smith and I will be staging another joint exhibition, in Nottingham, later in the year.  This trip was a chance to gauge how well our respective current bodies of work might sit together – something I came away feeling pretty confident about, in the event.

Anyway, as I’ve often done before – here’s a selection of random thoughts that occurred, both as I viewed Shaun’s work, and on further reflection over subsequent days.  So, in no particular order of importance…

Shaun Morris, 'A Little Bit Back From The Main Road',  Evesham Arts Centre, June 2018

• There's perhaps an inevitable tendency for a fellow practitioner to home straight in on how things have been done - even as the emotional/intellectual implications of an artwork are unfolding, so let’s start with that already mentioned paint handling.  In Shaun’s case, the manipulation of oil on canvas rarely disappoints.  It may be true that some of these new pieces take half a step back from some of the bravura effects of earlier work - but, if anything, this reigning-in of overt showmanship just seems to reaffirm his facility with the plastic qualities of oil paint.  There's still plenty to excite the eye in his brush work, but also a quiet assurance about many of these new pieces.  

• In reality, there’s an unlaboured deftness of touch in so much of Shaun’s painting, which allows him to capture the specific qualities of individual subjects, often with little more than a few sweeps of a loaded brush.  And it’s rarely all of one consistency.  Lightly scrubbed areas, and evidence of fluid staining, coexist with more buttery paint, to breathe extra life and depth into these canvases, and betray his confidence with a range of application techniques.  This is doubly important, given the nocturnal context of these images - which can bring a certain claustrophobia to any subject.  Shaun's handling of variable opacity, and of dragged or veiled passages of paint work hard to evoke the effects of limited illumination, and of suggested hinted-at details subsumed in coagulating shadows

Shaun Morris, 'The Street' Paintings, 'A Little Bit Back From The Main Road'

• This kind of painting can be especially hard to pull off on a small scale – and several of the pieces in this show are of relatively minimal dimensions.  There’s always a tendency for free marks to tighten up as wrist movements replace the flex of a whole arm.  Shaun seems able to sidestep, with ease, the potentially deadening effects which can often result.  Whilst he successfully paints at a variety of different scales, his ability to get on top of the easily overshadowed (apologies) small stuff is impressive.

• Various other artists kept springing to mind as I viewed Shaun’s work.  One is George Shaw (about who – more in a minute), but the another, perhaps more surprisingly, is Lucien Freud.  There’s an aspect of Freud’s work, which I’ve always enjoyed – in which specific contours and forms (the descriptive elements of representational painting, if you like) are carefully described with brushwork that still manages to energise the canvas through gestural dynamism and a sense of unceasing motion.  In certain passages of Shaun’s painting it feels like he’s getting pretty close to something similar.

Lucian Freud, 'Standing By The Rags', Oil On Canvas, 1988-89

Shaun Morris, 'The Street (Empty Boxes)', Oil On Canvas 2017-18

• This marrying of the expressive potential of paint (the hand), with the careful scrutiny (the eye), and analysis (the brain), in an instinctive balance is intrinsic to much of the greatest  painting of course.  It goes back though such giants as Manet, Rembrandt, Velasquez, et al – and might seem quaintly archaic to some.  My own inability to get to grips with it probably explains my own need to evolve different methods of expression, or more systematic approaches.  However, when done well, this way of working is still just as immediately captivating (if not more so) as anything else on the wall.

• And yet, pleasing though it may be to witness someone still unashamedly engaging with the timeless fundamentals of painting – it would be foolish to conclude that Shaun’s work is just all about ‘The Tradition’.  His subject matter tends unerringly toward the contemporary - be it in the case of the elevated roadways, heavy goods vehicles and commercial infrastructure of recent years, or the forlorn and fly-tipped suburban street visions of this current suite of images.

Shaun Morris, 'The Street (The Cooker)', Oil On Canvas, 2018

• There’s nothing grand about these environs.  Shaun’s milieu may be slightly further out from the centre of town from the shabby environs that trigger my own work, but it's clearly populated by many of the same discarded cardboard boxes, abandoned white goods, hired skips and sentinel wheelie bins.  This is a landscape so many of us now inhabit: one in which even our limited aspirations come with a slew of unwanted packaging; where those places not in a state of neglect are in one of almost unceasing re-fit; where calculated obsolescence renders the accoutrements of modern live less and less durable by the year; and where civic pride is little more than a quaint memory.  The source locations may be specific and parochial, but they seem to hint at a wider context, both geographical and societal, in which we wander untethered and despondent through the gloom of Austerity and Brexit.

• There’s always something a little cinematic about Shaun’s painting too - it seems to me.  This might be due in part to his habit of working largely from photographs in recent years. It’s probably almost certainly to do with the fact that he continues to represent his scenes at night.    There’s an inevitably noir-ish  flavour to be extracted from this, along with associated memories of Edward Hopper’s melancholic and distinctly filmic painted visions of the city after dark.  Perhaps, (and possibly because of the suburban setting), there’s even a slight Lynchian flavour too?  That might be my own pre-disposition, but I could definitely imagine David Lynch’s camera resting with trepidation on Shaun’s eerie, red window, or closing-in slowly on the shadowy interior of his discarded cardboard cartons.  Either way, the work seems redolent with contemporary cultural associations beyond the field of painting, as well as within it.

Shaun Morris, 'The Street (Title?)', Oil On Canvas, 2018

• There’s generally a little less overt spectacle in the subjects too - as well as in their  handling.   The subject matter is less forbidding or suggestive of implied dynamism or threat.  Sure, scary stuff happens in suburban streets too – but here there’s a sense that the drama is more internal.  It’s perhaps more likely to play out behind the red curtain of his startling red window, than necessarily in the shadows of the abandoned street outside.  It all just feels a little closer to (hopefully) relatively unthreatening home (as indeed, I believe it is - quite literally).

Shaun Morris, 'The Street' Paintings, 'A Little Bit Back From The Main Road'

• Despite the aforementioned painting's slightly infernal glow, and the acidic greens creeping into ‘White Goods’ (which might be my favourite, by the way – both for its subject matter and Diebenkornesque formal tendencies) it’s fair to say that Shaun seems to have desaturated his palette to some extent, of late.  In the past, he has proved himself a master of the lurid colour effects conjured by artificial lighting in urban or industrial settings.  His characteristic  bitter oranges, toxic limes and shimmering magentas are in fairly short supply here, to be increasingly replaced with a more tawdry palette of murky, submarine greens, dull blue-greys and pinkish browns (as in the splendid ‘The Street (The Ship')), or one which is just more generally tonal.  Is this another reflection of the slightly more domestic settings, I wonder – or perhaps because (as he has implied in his own blog) he is beginning to tire a little of his nocturnal meditations, and to yearn for a bit more daylight , and slightly less melodrama?  Time will tell, no doubt.

Shaun Morris, 'White Goods', Oil On Canvas, 2018

• Which brings me back to George Shaw – superficially because that artist’s last major cycle of paintings displayed a similar retreat from luminosity or heightened colour, but for rather deeper reasons too.  It’s certainly not the case that Shaun is merely aping Shaw.  In fact, in purely painterly terms, he would seem to have a wider vocabulary, and be prepared to take greater pictorial risks than the often relatively straightforward (as well as excellent) Shaw.  But it’s impossible not to remark on the depth of downbeat poetry each artist is able to extract from similarly quotidian subject matter.

Shaun Morris, 'The Street' (Negativeland)', Oil On Canvas, 2017

George Shaw, 'The Living And The Dead', Enamel On Canvas, 2015-16

• Shaw can provoke profound nostalgia for a lost youth, in any viewer of a certain age who might have shared a similar provincial upbringing, and consistently extracts an emotional frisson from the least promising sources.  And there’s little doubt that Shaun is doing something equally affecting with these deserted refuse-strewn street scenes.  There’s an equally strong sense of loss, although in Shaun’s case it feels more rooted in the present.  To me it feels more suggestive of the detachment and lost bearings we all increasingly experience in a society somehow cast adrift from old certainties.   We can walk past these windows, and along these familiar streets each night, and yet, it seems, there may no longer be any way home.

Shaun Morris, 'A Little Bit Back From The Main Road', continues until 30 June 2018, at Evesham Arts Centre, Prince Henry's School, Victoria Avenue, Evesham, Worcestershire. WR11 4QH

Disclaimer:

I compiled the details of specific images in this post from Shaun's website, having neglected to record them on the day.  It transpires the painting of the red window is yet to appear on there - leaving me unsure of it's exact title.  Likewise, I have a feeling the title of 'The White Goods' may have now changed.  Possibly, 'The Street (Figures)' now -  Shaun?  I hate my middle-aged memory!