Simon Morris
Daily Paintings

Morris’ method of measuring assiduously and recording the time spent creating his works provides an evocative counterpoint to both our overloaded life/work imbalances today, as well as with the common assumption that visitors to museums on the average spend thirty seconds (or less) before each work. This would be completely antithetical to the close attention Morris pays to the contemplative value of artworks for both artist and viewer. They’re just little bits of time, really. This is a paraphrase remembered from my recent visit to Simon’s studio. With characteristic modesty, the artist was speaking of the series of Daily Paintings, in which he applies a new coat of pigment across the surface of each canvas as a daily routine, preserving an unaltered sliver of the previous day’s work, and adding by accretion new layers as the process continues. Morris has further commented: “My interest in noting time in this way is that it suggests there is also a passage of time involved in conceiving the work, planning and preparing, then also the time in which the work sits in the memory of the viewer after the viewing experience.”^[i]

^[i]E-mail to the author, 9 October 2009.

from Simon Morris : Folding Water, Martin Patrick © 2009