Momentary capture
Anne Morris is a painter guided by colour and light. Carly Thomas visited her in her new studio.
Anne Morris’ art studio is a stop and stare sort of place. Built out of cedar and a gaping slice of glass, it sits at the bottom of the garden. At night, lit up, it looks like a hole in the sky.
Morris has waited a long time to have this gorgeous place to paint in. For 25 years she has worked from a little space out the back of her husband’s dental surgery in Palmerston North.
‘‘The customers always knew that if I wasn’t at the desk then that’s where I would be,’’ says Morris. ‘‘They would come and have a nosey at what I was up to.’’
Paintings that capture the feeling of place is what they would find. Landscapes that go a step beyond to what it felt like to be there. Morris says she doesn’t want to create an exact replica of a view. ‘‘It’s more about the colours, the feel and the light. I do use photos, so I start with reality, but from there it just goes where it takes me.’’
Stepping into her studio, it is clear to see that Morris adores it. She says she was adamant that she wanted cedar panelling, but she didn’t really know where that idea had come from.
‘‘And then my dad said to me: ‘Do you know that your grandmother had a cedar cottage at the bottom of the garden?’ I actually didn’t know that. And she painted as well.’’
Five large canvases are at the end of the bank of ceiling-to-floor glass. They are all different – a seagull gliding over a summertoned sea, a lake vista in luscious green, a waterfall and two pieces capturing a seascape framed with brooding storm clouds.
They all have one thing in common – they move. Morris has a real knack for creating motion. Large brushstrokes, layering and painting standing up with plenty of room to move are what she puts it down to.
‘‘And going from dark to light. Oh, and knowing when to stop and letting it be finished.’’
Morris says she may be oldfashioned, but she believes that you have to have a good drawing technique first before you figure out your own style.
‘‘Even if you are doing an abstract like this, you still need to have done life drawing. You have to understand what’s inside. You don’t draw what you see, you draw what you know. That’s when you can start capturing feeling and movement.’’
On the opposite wall is a painting Morris calls Totem. It was a moment that she saw when she was in Texas – a tree with a presence, struck by a magic light.
‘‘We were just about to go into the dungey little takeaway place and I looked to the left and there were all these fields out there and the light was just hitting that tree and I thought: ‘Oh, this is just great’.’’
The painting is full of joy and and a need to be in nature. ‘‘I love skies and clouds and trees. I’m always saying ‘look at the light’.’’ It gives you a sense of running forwards, like a child rushing through the tall green grass to stop and gaze upwards. It makes you want to be there.
Morris says she really believes that art doesn’t always have to carry a heavy meaning. Sometimes, just enjoying a piece is enough.
‘‘It can just be nice to look at. It can just make you happy or feel something.’’
Morris recently had to stand back and take a good look at her art. She was moving things into her new studio when she began to cast her eye over works that had gathered over the years. Many had been shelved as unfinished, tucked away waiting for attention but still relevant to moments in her life. They form the basis for Morris’ latest exhibition, The Spaces Between, at Taylor Jensen Fine Arts, and she says it was all quite cathartic.
‘‘The paintings in the exhibition are a new collection of works, but some have been painted on recycled canvas, works that I have started and never finished. Some are framed in recycled frames from works that I may have re-framed or recycled – a new life for something that has been forgotten, put aside or unfinished. Remembering, reinventing, renewing – life is a continuum of moments in time, and the spaces between.’’
Morris says she will never stop painting what she sees and feels. Noticing those times when the light hits like a beacon or a colour flash of trees make her stop the car and take a photo. And in her jewel of a studio she will work, making movement and holding time in the body of a canvas.
The Spaces Between: New Paintings by Anne Morris will be on show at Palmerston North’s Taylor Jensen Fine Arts until July 12.