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John Morris
Interview with the artist
What is your favourite media and why?
Oil is my favourite MEDIUM, no question. It's expensive so it feels special. I personally like the smell. According to my daughter my studio space smells really nice - sawn timber and oil paint (she tactfully didn't mention the cigarette smoke). I also enjoy the feel of mixing oil paint - the oily, buttery texture under my knife. It's a bit sexy, that's what it is. It takes eons to dry and that also makes it flexible and forgiving of mistakes. Yep, my favourite medium is oil paint.
For drawing I like charcoal and for botanical illustation I like watercolours in tubes.
Do you have a favourite amongst your own artwork?
"Catch me if you can" no question. I happen to think it was a great painting.
Have any of your artworks ended up in unusual or famous places?
Hmm. Not many if I'm honest. I once had a silkscreen print shown in Richmond town hall. That's Upon Thames, not Virginia, by the way.
Unusual? Well I once sold a painting (through minigallery of course) that I described as "bedroomy". It was a really nice nude of my other half and I suspect that the lady who bought it put it in her bedroom. Not very unusual perhaps but...
Recently, a really nice guy in Australia has been buying (dare I say collecting) my work and though the postage charges are a killer it's nice to think that at least my paintings can get some kind of a tan.
Who is your own favourite artist?
Egon Scheile
Which piece of art has provoked the strongest reaction in you and why?
Michelangelo's David - the craftsmanship is breathtaking. I've never seen it in the flesh and if I did I suspect I would faint. But I'm a painter so it would have to be a painting and it would have to be Gustave Courbet's "L'Origine du monde". Google it now. Bloody hell.
Do you have a funny story related to your art?
Not "funny" as such, it's just that when I was a student a rather overpowering American woman bought one of my drawings, I suspect because she fancied my dad.
Who or what has been the most influential factor in your development?
There have been lots of influences on me. My parents and my own current family of course, have all been supportive above and beyond the call. At college I was ably guided by a graphics tutor called Tony Hemingsley; you lovely man. My biggest influence developmentally - and, okay, it was his job - was my art teacher at school, Peter Dryland. God bless you Droopy, now a friend on 'facebook'. As an adult professional painter my biggest influences are a belief in my own genius and a desire to succeed.
Are you messy or neat when you work?
Messy. Sorry. In my studio I have a worktop running under the windows. It, in its entirety, is my mixing pallette. I planned a succession of brush cleaning jars - about half-a-dozen of them - to progressively wash my brushes until they emerged pristine from the final jar. They're all confused now, all filled with an equally disgusting slurry of turpentine and spent paint. I have paint on my clothes and under my nails (all different shades - kinky!) Yep, I'm messy.
Where do you work, do you have a studio?
Well, I'm too messy to work in the house. We have new seating in the living room and if I got paint on it...(imagine me now drawing a finger across my throat). So we erected a large timber structure (oh, alright, a shed) in the garden which I use as a fantastic studio. It's well lit, warm and secure and even if I do trip over my wife's gardening tools occasionally, it's perfect for the job. I could still use my former workspace as a drawing studio if I need to, because the "shed" isn't really suited to life modelling (neighbours, cats, etc)
If money were no object which artwork would you buy?
Ah, the lottery winners' dream question. Well, anything by Matisse or Picasso, for the investment, obviously, but if it had to be something I wanted to live with, I'd have Hockney's "A bigger splash" in the bathroom, "Shift" by Jenny Saville in the living room, "Dejeuner sur l'herbe in the kitchen/diner, something by Damien Hurst in the toilet, Picasso's "Blue nude" on the stairs and a Modigliani nude in the bedroom. To hang on the dashboard of my Audi R8 I'd have Courbet's "L'origine du monde" just so when a traffic policeman stuck his head in the window it would be the first thing he saw.
If you could travel back which point in art history would you like to visit?
Well the obvious answers I suppose; I'd like to have gone out for a Pernod or five with Toulouse Lautrec, or maybe a game of shove-ha'ppeny and a few glasses of red with Gaugin (I do like Gaugin's work) although if that nutter Van Gogh tagged along (better painter than he was company, I suspect) I'd probably just slink off and sulk in a corner. As for the Renaissance (have I spelt that correctly?), it's a nice idea but I'd have upset the cardinals and probably been burned at the stake (ouch!).
Seriously, I think a lot of artists have a romantic, jaundiced view of late 19th century France; all those breakthroughs and the massive upsurge of great creative and experimental geniuses and if you could inhabit the centre of all that then I can imagine no more exciting, uplifting or dangerous time in art history. I used to dream of starving in a garret, living with (and painting) a whore, and drinking whatever came within reach.
But that's in the past. I'm happy in the here and now.
What media would you like to try out?
My daughter is an art student. She painted, (very well), but now she's gravitating towards ceramics, or sculpture, or something (she's eighteen - why on earth should she tell me what she's up to?).
But sculpture.. I've often wondered about it. Probably clay (like I said, I'm old-fashioned) but then maybe car parts, broken glass, the possibilities are endless.
Do you display your own art at home?
Yes, generally, because it's the best place to hang it while it dries. My studio is too small to keep more than three or four wet canvasses safe. Fiona and I both like having (my) paintings around us but it's slowly becoming a bit of an "issue" with our five-year-old around as I paint more nudes. We've hung the milder ones around him and he doesn't mind (why should he?): He liked "Nude reading" - and said "Daddy painted a lady in the bare!"
Bless!
If your artwork could be displayed anywhere in the world where would you choose?
I typed a huge, long and very witty answer to this question, involving legalised grafitti, avuncular bar owners and bite-the-back-of-your-hand-beautiful waitresses but I lost it due to a PC glitch. Sorry.
How long does it usually take you to complete an artwork?
How long is a piece of string? Let's see. 'Legs from behind' took a couple of days, 'Catch me if you can' took bloody ages. It depends on so many things - my mood, the temperature in my studio, whether I have other non-art things to do... Generally, a painting of my usual size and complexity takes between two and seven days. Is that remotely interesting to anyone?
Which famous subject would you like to use in your art?
Obviously, at the moment, a famous nude would be fun. I like the way Lucien Freud recently painted Kate Moss as a chunky, heavily tanned but otherwise very ordinary bird with extensive pubic hair - not the way one imagines her. Off the top of my head, I'd like a pop at painting Glenda Jackson or Joan Bakewell in the nip. Don't ask me why. Please don't ask me why.
Have you ever had an art-related disaster?
I have disasters all the time. Probably because I work straight to canvas most of the time and I have no buffer. Well they're disasters to me - ideas that crash and burn on take-off or landing. When I can't translate what's in my head into paint the cats had better watch out - I feel a Johnny wilkinson coming on!
If a painting of mine goes wrong because I can't make it work, or because the idea was a duff one but-I-didn't-realise-that-until-it-was-too-late then I can overpaint the canvas (anyone who has bought a painting of mine might be advised to get it x-rayed!) but lots of artists over-paint their mistakes. Nothing blew up. Nobody died.
But it was a disaster to ME, ok?
Which is your favourite art gallery and why?
The Tate. In London. In the seventies, before there were dozens of other little Tates dotted around the country. I used to go there when I skived from my A levels (sorry Pete, it wasn't you and it wasn't art - it was just bloody school). Went to St Ives recently - What a Kharzi - never got to that Tate.
What do you find most difficult?
In technical terms that's easy: hands, feet and faces.
Have you ever inspired somebody to become an artist?
I doubt it.
But, well, look, I help daughter with stuff. I try to be encouraging, supportive, informative and constructively critical within the bounds of my energy, but I'm not what got her started. If she becomes the practitioner she could be then I'll lean on a bar somewhere and take the bloody credit, but no, she does it because she wants to and it's cool.
Are there other artists in your family?
Daughter. (Technically stepdaughter, because I'm not her father. However, as I'm fond of remembering, "any prick can be a father but it takes a man to be a dad").
She wants to be a sculptor and why not? Just so long as she doesn't let two tons of marble fall through her bedroom floor onto my head while I'm watching Top Gear.
And I do. Watch Top Gear, that is.
Have you ever had a gap where you haven't done any work, what made you restart?
Well yes. quite recently, and to anyone who has been paying attention I should have thought my absence was fairly obvious! It was nothing really, just a couple of strokes...!!! I eat pies, drink wine and smoke cigarettes. God's baying foxhounds WILL track you down if you do that stuff.
A stroke will bugger up your coordination, balance, speech, thought processes, self-confidence and self-awareness. (A big one, like my second one was, will bugger up everything else and make it er..."quite difficult" to paint). Jeez, look, this is a whole big book I don't have the time or the inclination to write.
As for what made me restart? Well, when I COULD paint, I WOULD paint. What else would I do? I used to paint, so I paint again. If anything got me over the hurdle it was my family: My fab wife (see "Recling nude with red hair") and my kids: the sculptress (19 and gorgeous, see "Still life with peasant girl"), the Thomas (16, and into politics!!!) and my little Lachlan (5, pride & joy).
What is the best tip you can offer budding artists?
My art teacher once called me an arrogant bastard and that's what I feel I would have to be to answer this question sincerely. So here goes...
DO IT!. Paint, make marks, make a mess. Look at stuff and draw it. If you ever see a woman naked don't think: Yum yum. Think: how does that body fit together? Where does the light fall on it?
Think artist thoughts. Look at the world and imagine it on paper or canvas or in clay or stone... Buy a sketchbook and make endless drawings and notes. Sniff paint(Stop if you feel light-headed). Work at it. It's work, not a hobby. The rest - a market, acclaim, a living - may or may not come in time.
We all have a purpose - yours is to do art until you can't do art. We are not here to get rich or to achieve power over others. If you sense that you MIGHT be here to make art, then make art and see if it swings. Drink with poets and composers and actors because they might understand you. Let estate agents and social workers die beneath your wheels.
What item could you not do without?
The folk who have bought, and mostly loved, my paintings. Who is reading this? If you are reading this, which I doubt, e-mail me to let me know.
I need zinc white paint and lots of it. And willow charcoal. And...God, the list is endless.
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