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.
Nigel Morris Visual Artist 