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A colourful artwork created using paint and oil pastel. The work consists of abstract shapes and patterns, with more figurative elements such as a two people's faces, people walking and cycling, and the outline of a building. Some marks appear to indicate clouds and rain.
Practice in Place

Practice in Place - Frank Morris

Frank Mor­ris shares his expe­ri­ences of liv­ing and work­ing as an artist in Bristol.

Posted
24/10/24

Tell us about you and your practice

I am an artist and my practice is based in drawing. I was born and have spent most of my life in London, but moved to Bristol a year and a half ago.

In my work, I explore the interplay of spontaneity and control, allowing the work to emerge through the creative process. I love the immediacy and tactile quality of oil pastels and I often use intuitive mark making and pattern to build up the surface of a drawing. I am inspired by my local environment and use regular drawing walks in the city as well as in nature to gather visual source material, which I then develop imaginatively in the studio.

A colourful artwork created using paint and oil pastel. The work consists of abstract shapes and patterns, with more figurative elements such as a two people's faces, people walking and cycling, and the outline of a building. Some marks appear to indicate clouds and rain.
A photograph of a hand holding an open sketchbook in front of a city street. The sketchbook has a charcoal drawing of the street on the open page.
CREDIT
A photograph of an open sketchbook placed on a pavement. The sketchbook has a charcoal drawing of a street scene on the open page.
CREDIT
A photograph of an open sketchbook placed on a pavement. The sketchbook has a charcoal drawing of a street scene on the open page, featuring a person an a mobility scooter..
CREDIT
  • A photograph of a hand holding an open sketchbook in front of a city street. The sketchbook has a charcoal drawing of the street on the open page.
  • A photograph of an open sketchbook placed on a pavement. The sketchbook has a charcoal drawing of a street scene on the open page.
  • A photograph of an open sketchbook placed on a pavement. The sketchbook has a charcoal drawing of a street scene on the open page, featuring a person an a mobility scooter..

Drawing in the streets of Bristol has been a great way to get to know the city better and has allowed me to develop a deeper connection to my new home and the surrounding area. Although my finished drawings seem detached from their original places of inspiration, I can still see a little bit of Bristol within all of my recent work. Poetry has also been an exciting additional form of inspiration for me and flicking through poetry books while working on a piece has become an important part of my creative process and a new tool to spark my imagination.

A Colourful artwork created using oil pastel. The work s an abstract, with colours and shapes representing a rural landscape. There is a sun in the top left corner of the work.
CREDIT

My artistic journey has been a little unconventional as I did not go to Art School and have had very little formal training. While I have been an obsessive drawer since a child, I felt art education at the time was not for me and decided to follow my academic interests and studied American and English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 2015 to 2019. Throughout this time I worked on building a freelance illustration and design practice, however I felt trapped in a style and meticulous working process that I eventually found creatively limiting. In 2021, I decided I needed to refresh my relationship with drawing and completed the Drawing Intensive course at the Royal Drawing School in London. This experience was incredibly liberating for me and opened the door to the free and playful style that I have today.

At the moment I make most of my drawings on pieces of scrap cardboard, using gouache to set down a coloured ground as I find this gives me something to react against. There is an un-fussy quality to cardboard that I like as well, which helps me get into the playful mindset needed to create my best work. I then like to add collaged cardboard elements, often taken from discarded drawings to develop the surface and create a sculptural element to the work. These imaginary landscapes are inspired from sketches made on my drawing walks as well as poetry - recently I have been reading a lot of Emily Dickingson and W.B. Yeats.

A colourful artwork created with oil pastel. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing a landscape, including trees, leaves and the moon.
CREDIT
A colourful artwork created with oil pastel and collaged elements. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing a park, including trees, ducks and the moon.
CREDIT
A colourful artwork created with oil pastel and collaged elements. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing a park, including trees, birds and stars. A face on the left of the work is open mouthed as if singing.
CREDIT
A colourful artwork created with oil pastel and collaged elements. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing an orange, red and brown hued landscape, including trees and the sun.
CREDIT
  • A colourful artwork created with oil pastel. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing a landscape, including trees, leaves and the moon.
  • A colourful artwork created with oil pastel and collaged elements. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing a park, including trees, ducks and the moon.
  • A colourful artwork created with oil pastel and collaged elements. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing a park, including trees, birds and stars. A face on the left of the work is open mouthed as if singing.
  • A colourful artwork created with oil pastel and collaged elements. The work is abstract, with colours and shapes representing an orange, red and brown hued landscape, including trees and the sun.

I also have a separate drawing project that I started in 2020 during the first lockdown. Finding myself like many others missing my friends and loved ones, one day I decided to go outside and draw what was to me a symbol of our loss of connection, my local closed pub. I really enjoyed the experience of drawing in public and having interesting conversations with passers by who missed pubs too. I drew around 20 pubs in London and I have continued the project here in Bristol. I think I have drawn around 22 in the past year and a half and I was fortunate to have an exhibition in one of my favourite pubs, The Hillgrove, last December.

Each of my pub drawings take me anywhere between five and twelve hours to complete as I draw all of my pubs in-situ, and enjoy adding a lot of intricate detail on the facades as well as including the pub goers. I try to draw exactly what I see and do not really ever deviate from what is actually in front of me. This makes the project a type of historical documentation as sadly we are losing our beloved pubs all the time, which has been exacerbated by covid and now the cost of living crisis. This project has also been a fantastic way to get to know Bristol; I would say from my experience that Bristol has some of the best pubs I have ever been to and they play such an important role in our local communities. At the moment though I am more focused on developing my more colourful and playful drawing practice, so lately I have had little time to spend drawing pubs.

A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. Two people are walking past as the is a moped parked outside. There is a tree to the right of the drawing, it's a sunny day.
CREDIT
A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. The are two people outside, one has a dog. The pub is on a corner where two roads meet.
CREDIT
A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. It is nighttime, and people are sat on benches outside under a streetlamp.
CREDIT
A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. People are sat on barrels outside the pub, and someone is cycling by. The pub has bunting and flags hung outside, and there are three A board signs.
CREDIT
  • A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. Two people are walking past as the is a moped parked outside. There is a tree to the right of the drawing, it's a sunny day.
  • A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. The are two people outside, one has a dog. The pub is on a corner where two roads meet.
  • A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. It is nighttime, and people are sat on benches outside under a streetlamp.
  • A detailed drawing of a pub in fine black pen. People are sat on barrels outside the pub, and someone is cycling by. The pub has bunting and flags hung outside, and there are three A board signs.

What are the great art spaces and organisations you love to visit?

In Bristol I regularly visit Arnolfini and Spike Island which put on varied and often inspiring exhibitions. I also like to check out Centre Space gallery, which is a wonderful artist-led co-op that has a number of workshops and affordable studio spaces. Some of my favourite art events of the year are the Jamaica Street and BV open studios as I love to enter the creative worlds of other artists and get a more intimate view on how they create their work.

I am a big fan of the Bristol art trails. This is a fantastic community initiative that allows artists, crafts people and makers of all sorts to turn their own homes into public galleries, showcasing their work, home studios and well - their homes!

I have also recently enjoyed seeing exhibitions at Bricks Bristol in St Annes house, which has become my second home since I have started EBC Day School, a year long alternative arts programme which has also given me my current studio space, which I share with the rest of the Day School cohort.

As well as gallery spaces I love Cinema, and enjoy going to both Watershed and the Cube to see a range of films, screenings, gigs and talks.

What resources or facilities are there that you (can) access?

The biggest resource and facility that I am trying to make the most out of in Bristol is the city itself! Drawing out on the streets with all the hustle and bustle and constant movement is a brilliant place to find inspiration as an artist. I often return to the same places again and again, like St. Nicholas’s market, the harbourside and castle park as they are full of life and activity. Drawing outside allows you to see the city more clearly and you start to notice things that others might miss, like a beautiful old pub sign, a comical gargoyle or just the particular way that people move and interact with our urban landscape.

Cheerlead for your peers! - Who would you like to shout loudly about?

I’d like to give a shout out to Harriet Bowman and Natasha MacVoy who coordinate and run Day School. They are both brilliant artists and have done a great job in facilitating this year's cohort and reaching out to the various amazing guest artists that run our education days; so far we have had workshops by Jo Lathwood and Steph Huang, which have been really inspiring.

Also my Day School peers, Alice Voss, Amanda Hall, Beatrice Peppercorn, Bibiana Krauskova, Calum Louis Adams, Fatima Montanez, Honor Vokes, Jessie Brindell, Mary Flower, Matilda Wright, Saffron Murray-Browne, Simone Marconi and Vesper Cain!

Where do you make your work?

I currently make my work on the streets of Bristol in my sketchbook, as well as in my shared studio space in St. Anne's house as part of Day School. St Anne’s house is a beautiful building, with lovely natural light and surrounded by greenery. I really like that most of the studios are designed without doors, which harbours a sense of community and invites a creative dialogue between artists.

Having this studio space to make my work has been a real boost to my practice. Previously I worked in my flat and while I was grateful for the space, I felt really isolated. Being part of Day School and working in a shared studio makes me feel part of a creative community and I think that my work has benefited as a result. Having never gone to art school, being around creative activity and other artists has been something I have wanted for a long while and I am really grateful for this opportunity. I was also fortunate enough to be awarded the VASW grant, which helped me pay for part of my course and was a contributing factor to me applying and being able to take part.

An important part of my practice is setting up my space in a way that invites play. While this is fun and stimulating, it can get quite messy, so having a space where I can spread out has been really beneficial. Also my partner is happy that I have taken this activity out of our flat!

A photograph of a white man wearing a yellow, turquoise and grey jumper and pink cap. He is standing next to a table with his head bent over an artwork that he is making. The artwork is an oil pastel work on cardboard with collaged elements. There are books and oil pastels on the table next to the work.
CREDIT

What opportunities are there for artists in your area?

Bristol is a city full of opportunities for artists and creatives of all kinds. I also feel like these opportunities feel more accessible and less daunting to apply for than those in London, where I think it feels harder as a young artist to get involved and become a part of a creative community. Being part of Day School has so far been an amazing experience and I would really encourage creatives to apply for next year. Our cohort is quite small (there are fourteen of us) and we all come from a variety of backgrounds and have very different practices ranging from painting, performance art, conceptual art, community engagement related practices and writers, which has fostered really interesting conversations and opened my mind to different ways of thinking about and making art.

Bristol also hosts a number of regular art clubs, life drawing sessions, community crit meet-ups and talks which you can attend on a weekly basis. I find out about a lot of these through the Bristol Headfirst app, which advertises a lot of the city's art events, gigs and club nights in an easy to use calendar-like format.

What or who helps you maintain your practice?

Although I would say I am quite independently driven and have developed a healthy work ethic on my own, having my peers from Day School has been an energising boost, which has already helped improve my confidence. I think for a long time I felt isolated and a little out of touch with other artists. Although I am happy that I managed to maintain and build a consistent practice, I think it is much better to be part of a community of artists, where you can have constructive conversations, support each other and bounce ideas around.

I have a love/hate relationship with instagram, but I would say that it does offer me a sense of community and relationship to other artists. Being able to share work on the platform and chat with inspiring creatives has definitely been a helpful influence in keeping my practice going. But instagram is only really good as a supplement, being digital and quite detached from reality. Having connections with artists and fellow creatives in real life is much more rewarding!

What else would you love VASW's audiences to know about where you live and work as an artist?

One thing that I love about Bristol is how easy it is to access green spaces. I have found Bristol to be such a great base, which has allowed me to easily visit and explore Wales as well as Devon and the south coast. Coming from London it sometimes felt impossible to get out of the city, which could lead me to feel a bit claustrophobic (although London does have great parks). Being an artist interested in landscape, being close to so much nature has been really nourishing and is definitely a real positive aspect of the city.

How can people find out more about your work?

People can find my work on instagram at @frank_morris_art


Practice in Place is a conversation with artists in the region, where we find out about their practice, and what it's like to be an artist where they live.

VASW contributed to Frank's place at Day School through funding from the West of England Visual Arts Alliance (WEVAA), a programme of activity that aims to transform Bristol and the West of England into a place where the visual arts can thrive. WEVAA provides critical opportunities and support to enable artists, curators and young people to develop their careers and achieve their potential. Find out more about the programme here.

VASW