Quiet Signs | Recent Paintings by Shaun Morris

Opening 15th March

6pm-9pm

Then by appointment until 4th April

Shaun Morris will also be leading workshop on the 30th March 6pm.

Please Contact | info@theasylumartgallery.com or book through the ticket section.

The evening will be hosted by artist and lecturer Shaun Morris as part of his exhibition that will be on display during the event. Shaun is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College and painter of 30 years. Shaun will be leading the event by teaching guests painting techniques to help guests improve their own skills.

Guests will be provided with paints, brushes and a canvas up on arrival but all are welcome to bring their own equipment if they wish. Wine will also be provided throughout the evening to insure no one gets thirsty but again guests are welcome to also bring their own drinks if they wish.

Shaun’s practice lies firmly within the representational traditions of painting and printmaking, but also situates itself firmly within the contemporary world he sees around him. His work displays an abiding involvement with deftly manipulated oil paint and for the energized graphic line. But his straightforward honesty and undoubted facility in the rendering of images belies the depth of poetry he finds within his quotidian subject matter.

Whether in the stillness of parked vehicles or in the discarded trash and waiting skips lining the streets of his West Midlands home - Shaun finds a profound melancholy in the normally overlooked details of everyday urban life. Many of his nocturnal

subjects appear haunted – sunk within inky shadows or bathed in the sickly hues of street lighting. When he emerges into daylight, it might be to depict the vacant ad-hoc shanty dwellings of society’s equally disregarded rough sleepers. Through it all,runs a profound sense of loss – be it loss of a safe place to call home, the prospects

of a secure economic future, or the pride in industry and stable relationships that once fortified communities in Shaun’s native Black Country. Perhaps it’s the loss of political decency, or of too many of those things which once anchored this place to any confident sense of itself. Perhaps it’s the loss that leaves us now feeling

somehow cast adrift.