Today we’re journeying down the rabbit hole, into the Alice in Wonderland-esque world of Paul Morrison. Sculptor, animator, muralist and collage artist, Morrison is best-known for monochromatic botanical landscapes infused with a disquieting sense of the monstrous due to his manipulation of scale.

In today’s blog, we’re revealing a little more about Morrison, the methods behind his creations and where he gets his inspiration…

 
Appropriated imagery

Morrison’s highly-recognisable work spans various disciplines – from paintings and prints, to film, sculpture and vast wall paintings. Whichever form he opts for, the result is similar – surreal landscapes and night gardens crafted from modified appropriated images, sourced everywhere from Disney cartoons and Renaissance woodcuts, to Lichtenstein and 60s Pop Art.

Playing with scale

Once Morrison has selected his chosen imagery, the next stage in his process is to have some fun digitally-manipulating each image, playing around with scale, magnifying, shrinking and distorting his subjects to create artworks inspired by botanical illustrations, comics and timeworn engravings.

To lend his work its hypnotic air, Morrison is a master of disrupting proportions – tiny plants are transformed into behemoths, massive trees shrunk to the size of shrubs. The result is unsettling, almost psychedelic fantasy environments that from one angle appear innocent, and the next, tinged with a distinct sense of malevolence, causing you to wonder what kinds of treacherous beast might be lurking behind those enormous petals. This unusual combination has led some to describe his scenes as ‘Disney without the characters’.

Once happy with his tinkering, the next stage in Morrison’s process is to project the final images onto a gallery wall or canvas, before tracing and filling in the projected image with black acrylic paint.

We’re delighted to welcome Paul Morrison to Enter Gallery. You can view his artworks here.