For their final monthly meeting of 2023, Guild members and guests were treated to a demonstration by visiting artist Simon Morriss.
Simon Morriss is an artist based in the Cotswolds. He has exhibited with the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, in the Royal Watercolour Society Contemporary Watercolour Exhibition and at the Royal West of England Academy. In 2012, he was elected an associate member of the Society of Graphic Fine Art and promoted to full membership in 2016.
After a career in Architecture, he returned to study gaining a Foundation Degree in Creative Practice from the University of the West of England and, in 2014, an MA in Fine Art from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.
Simon’s theme for the evening was a woodland scene painted in acrylics using his distinctive brushwork to draw forth the depiction from a plethora of abstract marks and drips used to initially disrupt the surface of the support.
Simon began by introducing his materials. He favours Golden Fluid Acrylics, with his palette for the evening including green, cobalt turquoise and yellow oxide for his initial mark-making and underpainting. His support was a large square, gesso-ed board primed with an underpainting of pale violet. He also mentioned the brushes he would be using which were Liquitex Paddle Brushes.
For the first stage of his painting Simon explained that he selected an rather under exposed reference photo of the subject to help him visualize the dark areas of the tree trunks, undergrowth and shadows of the forest scene. He proceeded to apply what would be underpainting in a variety of bold abstract strokes, encouraging vertical drips as part of the process of disrupting the blank board.
After a break for refreshments Simon continued with the second part of his demonstration, this time he selected a more over exposed reference photo to help him better visualise the highlights and in particular the sunlight breaking through the trees. At this stage Simon introduced warmer shades using burnt sienna and pyrrole red, with hansa yellow medium and of course white adding the glow of sunlight through the trees. These lighter tones were used to indicate negative space and pick a out myriad of tree trunks, branches and twigs from the underpainting applied in the first stage of the painting.
The finished work was inspiring. For more examples of Simon’s style please take a look at his website, particular his woodland series.
