Annie Morris

January 31, 2015

Hugo Hess

Music, Gestalt, .

Annie Morris is a multimedia artist that produces paintings, sculptures, and collages. She became known for illustrations when, in 2003, she came into the public eye for her collaboration with her longtime friend Sophie Dahl (granddaughter of the famous British children’s writer Roald Dahl) on the book Man with the Dancing Eyes. Her prolific output and figurative obsession conveys a young artist simultaneously at ease and un-settled with herself and her practice.

Annie was born in London in 1978. Influenced by Paul Klee and Robert Rauschenberg, Morris studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris. After staying there for four years she completed her education at the Slade School of Fine Art, in London.

The paintings, sculpture and collage of Annie Morris are obsessive, energetic and thoughtful. She is above all else a mark maker who uses the simplest of tools to make striking, often haunting images.Her peg pieces are constructed through rows and rows of clothes pegs. A female figure, often a self-portrait, is drawn onto each peg with watercolour swathed over them. Formally they become impressive objects hovering between figuration and abstraction; painting and relief sculpture. Conceptually the female figure is laid bare on the most basic of domestic objects whilst their compulsive repetition pays homage to one of Morris major influences – the Outsider artists.

Likewise her glass figures expose a primitive angst and a need to engage with the self. They show Morris’ fascination with the work of art as object: the relationship between two and three dimensions, front and back, color and transparency. Morris’ plaster paintings reveal her skill as both a colourist and a draughtsman. Deep greens, browns and ochres off-set one another whilst line is used to create a classical yet child-like world of animals, figures, houses and trees. The innocent sophistication gives the work their charm yet one also senses a lonely, questioning spirit beneath the recessed lines and coloured surface. The fragmented surface of the postcard pieces combine the compulsive nature of the pegs, her unquenchable desire to draw and create with the seemingly classical slant of her profiles and figures.

Annie Morris currently lives and works in London.

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