chris morgan - the art of realism: glass

Showing posts with label glass. Show all posts

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Away but for good reason.

It's been too long since I posted a proper blog and for good reason, I'm not the type of person to vent my opinions, concerns and annoyances on social media and having just gone through a combination of disappointment, let down and upset I felt I needed a little time away from the blog so I didn't let my emotions get the better of me and end up writing a blog that quite frankly would have been totally unprofessional, all I'll say on the matter is that I felt very let down and wished people would be more open and honest as this is how I live my own life.

But the new page has been turned and here I am writing once again for all you lovely supporters. Regardless of what happens I continue to keep busy and create everyday and the last few months have not been any different, I have recently been working with fine art dealer Clive Ashmore and also teamed up with AC fine art galleries to create a number of limited edition fine art prints that I am super excited about.

The decision was made to put in two of my toy soldier paintings into print and these were "Black Gold" and "Make Peace Not War 2"

"Black Gold"

Signed limited edition of only 75

28" x 19" Printed on Canvas

Framed

£395

"Make Peace not War 2"

Signed limited edition of only 75

36" x 18" Printed on canvas

Framed

£475

Signing Prints - Canvas on board

for more information on prints email me on chris_morgan13@hotmail.com

And of course I've been working away on a whole bunch of other originals and commissioned pieces

The first is a piece that was something a little different for me but I wanted to convey my feeling of how I feel women should be treated, I feel that all to often men think that treating there women mean will keep them keen but I'm so far away from this opinion that I wanted to create a piece surrounding this very subject....I personally believe that a woman should be treated with respect and love and showered with compliments every day, building her up not putting her down and so I created this piece and as I am using a lot of toys in these new series of painting I decided to use little girls favourite the Barbie/Cindy doll.

"Shower Her with Compliments"

24" x 32"

Oil on box canvas

SOLD

I've also been Commissioned quite a bit recently and created three commissions for clients all different but all equally as enjoyable to paint.

The first is of a Bertie Bassett box, a classic favourite sweet of many.

"Bassetts All Sorts"

22" x 16"

Oil on Canvas

SOLD

The Second was the entirely the clients idea as he had seen my star wars Lego commission and liked that idea but came to the table with his own twist, he wanted the characters stood on top of a floating galaxy bar and have the piece titled "On a Galaxy far far away"

"On a Galaxy Far Far away"

20" x 16"

Oil on Canvas

SOLD

and the third was a ladies favourite chocolate bar....the small but mighty Freddo and I was quite happy to paint this as it brought back a lot of my own child hood memories of going into the local paper shop and paying just 10p for this little chocolate frog

"Freddo"

30" x 18"

Oil on Panel

SOLD

And of course aside from commissions I've also created a few new original pieces, after being inspired by the Star Wars Galaxy commission I wanted to come up with something myself and decided to add a few more space related sweets in there and this is what I came up with

"Choc Wars"

18" x 30"

Oil on wooden Panel

SOLD

And of course I added to my toy soldier series with two new pieces one of which went straight into print with AC Fine art

" Make Peace Not War"

Oil on Panel

Original Available from Jamie Leigh Fine arts - sales@jamieleighfineart.co.uk

Accompanying this original I created a little promotional video and a new series that I will frequently post called "Studio Life" you can find it the video on my face book page -

just search Chris Morgan Art

"Rebel"

30" x 20"

Oil on Canvas

Original Available from Jamie Leigh Fine arts - sales@jamieleighfineart.co.uk

Sunday, 14 June 2015

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

With each new Blog post I always tell myself that I should do them more frequently than I do, but I have kind of given myself a break about it recently. Of course I could create a blog post each time a new piece is created or when anything remotely interesting happens to me, but I kind of like waiting a couple of months between Blogs so that they have more meat to them, yeah sure they take me longer to write but I think I'd much rather be sat down in the right frame of mind with the right kind of focus and create better content for you guys to read than bang out a blog every week or so.

Anyway, I'm rambling....

Since the last Blog I have created four new pieces and I'm currently working on another.
The first piece since the portrait I created of my father, is another toy inspired piece and one of my largest pieces to date, My father quite a few years ago gave me an old wind up toy aeroplane, I think with the intention to paint, but at the time I didn't really think of anything I could use It for so put it away for safe keeping. It was only when I was sorting through a few things that I stumbled across this wonderful little toy, obviously now I was creating a few pieces with toys and so this sparked a few ideas.

I knew I didn't want to paint the plane just on it's own and had a few Ideas, but one that kept coming around again and again was a composition that included a pilot, I started to search the web to find the right kind of toy but had no real idea what I would find, until I stumbled across the most perfect toy pilot I could have ever wished for, the colours were a perfect match for the plane, the little details on his uniform etc were exactly what I was looking for, and so a purchase was made.

A Couple of days later he arrived and I set about creating some compositions until I settled on one, this composition was simple yet striking and as I knew what the title would be It would be a nod to the British dry sense of humour.....the title...."Is this a wind up"

I felt this worked as I created the pilot with a very unimpressed expression as if to say "You don't expect me to fly this...do you" whilst at the same time having the more obvious fact that it was indeed a wind up plane.

"Is this a Wind Up"

48" x 36"

Oil on Panel

SOLD

The next piece that came out of the Studio was again based on an old Vintage wind up tin toy I had purchased for my self, It was a small boxing ring with two fighters in the centre and when you wind the toy up the fighters moved backwards and forwards allowing there one riveted arm to move freely and look like they were indeed throwing punches. Again I didn't want to just paint it exactly how it was and so I thought it would be a nice to give the piece a little change so I could show a mark of respect for one of my favourite films growing up, What film??.......Rocky

The way I was going to do this was to change the shorts of the two tin fighters to the short designs that both Rocky and Apollo wore in the first film, only a true fan would notice this small change but for those of you that are not familiar here is a screen shot from the film Rocky

Film Still of the film Rocky.

Now I started painting this piece and to be honest I really struggled for some reason, I found the characters looked too cartoony and kept working on them to make them look more realistic, but then they wouldn't look like the tin material they were made of and this went on back and fourth until finally I decided to stop messing around and paint exactly what I saw

The actual Tin toy I was attempting to paint with my painting in the background

I worked at it more and more and I feel it actually came out really well and looked like the material I was trying to render with paint

"Slugger Champions"

30" x 30"

Oil on Panel

AVAILABLE

The next piece came as a commission, the client was a chief fire officer and had liked some of my toy pieces and asked if I would paint him a little Lego fire fighter character putting out a tea light, his only request was that I painted the character with a white chief's hat.

I set about creating this piece for him and loved every minute of it, the particular challenge for me whilst creating this piece was painting the smoke drifting away from the candle wick, but I was really pleased with how I rendered this and felt it came out better than I was anticipating

"FIRE" - Commission

30" x 18"

Oil on panel

SOLD

Hanging in the clients home

At this point I was craving something with reflections and glass, for those that have followed my work this is as you all know something I love to paint.

And so this piece was created

"The Gambling Game"

21" x 21"

Oil on panel

SOLD

I also had a print made of one of my paintings from my show last year and had it framed to hang in my kitchen and finally got around to hanging it on the wall....and I love it!!

Marmite print hanging in my kitchen.

So, that's you all up to date with my goings on, I'm currently working on a few commissions but as always I'll be blogging about them soon.

Saturday, 20 December 2014

SHOW TIME

Well It's been nearly a month since my collaboration and first UK showing with Warwick Studios Gallery and the first opportunity to sit down and write this well over due blog. Now if you have been reading the few posts I have been making throughout the year you will have seen some of the things I've been getting up to and a few of the early releases of some of the originals for the show but this is whats been happening.

In January David at Warwick Studios asked me if I would be interested in having a show with him at the gallery, I accepted and got to work on 12 large original oil paintings and 12 original study sketches , I knew that with each piece taking anything from 3-4 weeks to complete I would have to cram potentially 12 months comfortable work into 10 months hard slog to hit the agreed November deadline, I knew in order to get this done I would need to be super organised and extremely dedicated and so I worked tirelessly making sure that each piece was done with as much love and passion as the next trying never to get complaisant or let standards slip and 10 months later during the late part of October I had completed all 24 originals.

Now I usually like to go into details in my blogs about individual pieces and explain what triumphs and tests I have had during the process. But in all honesty the pieces for the show, because of the nature of doing them back to back to back without being able to post about them or share them on social media became somewhat of a complete blur, but what I can remember about a few of the pieces is this..."Fingers in the Sweetie Jar" took me the longest and towards the end of the process had lost my patience with it but was happy with the end result...."Love is on the cards" was one of my personal favourites especially as it was the first piece of mine that had double meaning...."My last Rolo" was a challenge as I had never tackled tin foil before but I think I handled it well and I always had a soft spot for this piece as it was the main feature in my promotional video for the show..."Colmans" required 3-4 layers of yellow paint to get it looking right....."Cola Crush 2" really tested me so much so that I almost didn't put in the reflections but was so pleased I talked myself into doing them as I felt it really made the piece...."Chutney and Cheese"...first time painting bread and I had to use a block of real cheese to match the right colour....."Fish Supper and Sarsons"....really liked painting this piece and enjoyed eating the composition :-)......"Chips, Cone and Ketchup"...by far my favorite piece to paint, big, bold, great lighting, and I loved the composition..."Guilty Pleasures" inspired by a UK seaside holiday I had with the family in August, I thought this piece would be easy to paint until I started to do the wafer cones and realised just how fiddly painting the little squares was.

But that i'm afraid is about all I can remember. Just know there were lots of testing times but a lot of successes, a huge amount of work and a huge weight lifted when I hit the deadline.

I had all pieces picked up by a great fine arts delivery man called Andrew Shrives who always looks after my work and had them sent for framing. Once framed, David had them returned to the gallery ready for the hanging, but picture this for me if you will. Its Friday night the next day is the show. Im feeling a little rough with a cold and David is trying to hang 24 pieces in the gallery. I get a message from David at 7pm telling me that the pieces had bent his rail as they were to heavy (I paint on wooden panel and once framed especially if there large can be quite heavy) his fridge in the gallery had broken and water had run everywhere, one of the posters had been accidentally thrown out with the trash and he had hurt his back!! As you can imagine I was pretty panicked 10 months hard work was now in the balance and was looking like it might not even happen, but David pulled it off and we were back in action.

It was now Saturday morning and as you can imagine I was feeling the nerves of excitement and also the feelings of worry and doubt. Now anyone that has ever produced anything personal that has been created and put out for the public to judge, whether it be a Poem, a book, a song or in my case art work they will all know that thought that pops into your head....will people like what I'm doing?

My appearance at the gallery was between 1 and 4 and so I decided to get there a little earlier to have some lunch before hand...12:30 arrived and I'm just enjoying my lunch when David calls me and asked if I'm nearly at the gallery, I explained that I was just having my lunch and was only minutes away, he then told me that people had come early to see the show and that it might be a good idea to get to the gallery as soon as I could and so I stuffed my face as quickly as I could and got myself to the gallery. I arrived and was blown away by the way that David had hung the work, on a lovely slick black wall all framed and looking beautiful together and people already admiring the works. I got chatting to a lovely bloke who had taken a liking to Cola Crush 2 and after a brief conversation with me decided that he must have that piece and brought it there and then, I felt chuffed and remember thinking to myself "Brilliant at least one had sold"....then it went manic. as collectors from all over the country from London to Manchester and everywhere in between came to view my work, I literally would be speaking to one person discussing the work then I would turn to find someone else who wanted to talk It was amazing to say the least. One and a half hours went by and I looked up from talking to see a sea of red stickers....in 1.5 hours I had sold 23 of my works and I was blown away!!!

I met some lovely collectors from the old to the new that day and I just wanted to say a Huge thank you to all who came on the day to support me in my work,, you all know it really does mean a lot to me and without your support it would make it very difficult for me to carry on. I want to say a big thank you to David Sands for doing an incredible job, my family for there every growing support and lastly to my wife and kids who have always stood by me throughout all the late nights early hours and long weekends without me being there, I'm just so pleased its been worth all the hard work.