January 2023 Artist Statement

Nigel Morris is a visual artist working in North Wales in the UK making paintings and prints. His work evolves from the perception of abstraction, symmetry, system, and organisation, while working with these parameters it is a continual challenge to break away from these configurations. The practice and process of making visual art is for Morris an immersive act prompting questions, conclusions, and development generating more analysis of the same, it’s an organic cycle of progression. Working in this way the product is never static, a question or idea is posed, and the practice engages this and work comes out of that equation. This means the practice works with a basic range of “tools” but the formula changes resulting in variables of the art made.

During 2022 Morris’s practice returned to painting, after a break of several years a reassessment of scale and media has given new direction and context to the work. Digital drawing provides a new looser approach and starting point. By drawing on an iPad the parameters of using a digital drawing tool have changed the action resulting in a different    perception of each mark made. Although the introduction of a digital tool is significant, the handmade artefact remains the prime method of artmaking, after the initial drawing a return to more tradition approach is re-established.

For many contemporary artists the critical reality of climate change has become a concern invoking reference in the context of the work, recent paintings and prints made by Morris prompt a visual dialog to an imagined reality, the title of several artworks offers a nod to the visionary filmmakers from the past 60 years who presented an ominous vision of the future.  Engaging abstraction allows Morris to propose images the viewer can consider and interpret individually. 2023 could see an even more paradigmatic shift in the practice by bringing the new context into printmaking.

Nigel is the facilitator at Regional Print at Coleg Cambria in Wrexham, an open access print studio there he teaches printmaking and gives technical support. The influence of print and its many techniques allows for experimentation and reflection in his own work. 

Ruthin Craft Centre

Laminaria I

4 Colour Reduction Linoprint edition of 8

Sporoza I

binary comment

New Artist Statement March 2021

Nigel is a visual artist working in North Wales In the UK making paintings and prints. His work evolves from the perception of abstraction, symmetry, system and organisation, while working with these parameters it is a continual challenge to break away from these configurations. The practice and process of making visual work is an organic structure, evolving, questioning and resolving. Working in this way the product is never static, a question or idea is posed and the practice engages this and work comes out of that equation. This means the practice works within a basic range of “tools” but the formula changes resulting in variables of the art made.

In late 2020 the work has returned to the proposition of mark making and his own interpretation of this fundamental act, so using the “tools” perceived in the practice a re-examination of the nucleus of making art is taking place.

Fenestra I   Screenprint Paper Construction 2019   35 x 20 cm

Conquasso I     Screenprint Paper Construction 2018   30×30 cm

Cubus I     Screenprint Paper Construction 2018 50 x 50 cm

New Artist Statement January 2019

Nigel is a visual artist working in North Wales in the UK making paintings and prints, his work is mainly associated with the flatness of paper and canvas, but has a developing interest in the sculptural forms of these disciplines and explores the ideas of flatness, surface and formin relation to the printed/painted image.

An emerging theme in the work is physical and perceived distortion, by usingthe simplicity and duplicity of line he investigates the balance and unity of symmetry, colour and spatial aesthetics promptinga manipulation of image using moiré distortion, interference pattern and spatial index. Although the complexity of these subjects could infer science and mathematical research Nigel’s interest remains in the visual perception of an artist eye.

 

“I like my art to play with our visual senses, to challenge our experience of looking, to help the viewer question what they see in a piece of art.”

 

He is the print facilitator for The Regional Print Centre at Wrexham, North Wales teaching printmaking through courses and workshops. He recently completed an MA in Fine Art Studio Practice at the University of Central Lancashire, prior to this studied at The University of Chester and Edinburgh College of Art. He recently was awarded the ArtLab CPS prize for printmaking and was shortlisted for the Flourish Award.

 

 

Saline Sulphate Etchings.

For some time now I have been making etchings using saline sulphate and the result have been improving all the time, ever since I started printmaking in 2009 i have never been content with any of the attempts at etching, I blundered through with the grounds and the etching needles and been dismayed as the images produced. Lately the context of my practice has re-assessed the geometric, drawn line aesthetic of my work in relation to my ideology of abstraction, the moiré effect is one outcome of this, another is the constructed geometric emerging by intuitive drawing using ruler and compass. These contextualise the grid, perspective and spacial awareness. By using the newer acrylic resists and aquatints available combined with the saline etch I have begun to make  forward steps in my etching methods and prints. 

Now I look to Electro etching with guidance from the excellent Don Braisby, using steel but continuing with the acrylic resists and aquatint.