DAMIEN MINTON PRESENTS
John Morris | Under Heavens 2024
OPENING NIGHT
Tuesday 6th August 6.00pm – 8.00pm
EXHIBITION DATES
7th – 17th August 2024
11:00am – 6.00pm
Wednesday to Saturday
Two weeks only
LOCATION
Damien Minton Presents
50 Buckingham Street
Surrey Hill, NSW
All enquires and sales to:
Damien Minton: 0400 099 620 damienminton1@gmail.com
Instagram @john.g.morris
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An exhibition of two parts. The premiere of a suite of new work plus a selection from John’s stock room.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have always wandered. If I can take an indirect route I will. When travelling I like to get lost. That way I can come across the unexpected. Wandering is accompanied by wondering. Travelling always brings questions, some personal, some about where I am as the landscape unfolds. I often stop to take a closer look.
To consider the relationship between the prevailing rock structures, the soil and what grows from it. It is best not to be in any hurry or have a destination deadline.
I am happy to witness atmospheric events, to let them sweep over me. To see how the climate and vegetation changes as elevation increases. To see what use the land has been put to. Where the water runs to, where sediment is deposited. What grows where. I usually do this by myself. The resulting paintings are reflective images. Singularly witnessed not viewed. I always feel as though I am a part of the landscape, not apart from it.
I have been preoccupied with painting landscape for most of my adult life. The paintings are rarely about place, most often they are a means to convey an emotion or mood. The narrative comes from within the viewer. The paintings are often minimal in nature, bringing about a sense of contemplation and reflection, maybe even a spirituality.
People who know my work send me images taken on their phones of landscapes they are travelling through labelling them “a John Morris landscape.
Often the images have a dominance of the heavens in their composition.
JOHN MORRIS, 2024