{"id":9193,"date":"2021-04-29T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T10:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/?p=9193"},"modified":"2026-02-03T04:05:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:05:39","slug":"much-as-i-love-film-painting-will-always-be-my-passion-in-life-suzi-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/?p=9193","title":{"rendered":"“Much as I love film, painting will always be my passion in life.” – Suzi Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Exclusive Interview with Suzi Morris’ – Filmmaker & Painter<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Suzi Morris\u2019 paintings resonate with the spirit\nof scientific discovery whilst exploring the relationship between the unpredictable\ninner landscape of the body and paint. \u2018Self\u2019 is metamorphosed as \u2018I\u2019, a\npainted line which appears singularly or repeated, emerging in some works from\ndense networks of swirling brush strokes and in others manifesting among\natmospheric clouds or hovering at the edge of inky dreamscapes. Painted in\nvarying tones of cadmium red, deep cobalt blue and vibrant greens, these\nvisions describe an inward observation; a looking into the body where\nmicroscopic space expands and extends infinitely \u2013 a reversal of perspective\nwhich inverts the outward-looking notion of the Nineteenth-Century colonial\nsublime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living with the ordeal of viral keratitis led\nMorris to research the wider concerns over advances in DNA sequencing and\nregenerative medicine at Imperial College, London. Discovering that science is\nharnessing the power of the virus from which she has suffered all her life in\nengineering cures for cancer, led to her doctoral thesis proposal of the Viral\nSublime<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sublime has its origins in the ancient world\nand yet it remains a symptomatically modern aesthetic. Morris\u2019 concept of a Viral\nSublime<\/em> is being refreshed and reinvigorated for a post-Romantic age when\nthe natural world is under such cataclysmic threat, and our atomized lives\nforce a solitude that many would rather avoid. \nThese bold, resplendent paintings explore where postmodern ideas of the\nsublime survive and thrive in the fields of bio-technology, medicine and\nscience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A former Art Director in Film, Morris completed her professional doctorate in Fine Art at University of East London in 2017, supported by da Vinci Artists Brushes and Schmincke Paint. Previously, she was offered a scholarship to Kingston University and later received an MA in Painting from the City & Guilds of London Art School. In 2017 she was featured in Modern Painters and her work is represented in the Imperial College, London art collection and many other corporate and private collections globally. Morris lives and works in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suzi Morris The Paradox of Terror and Beauty2020_oiloncanvas190x140cm. Photo@suzimorrisart <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

NY Glam: Tell us a little about yourself and your career beginnings. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in Scotland, the middle child of three children. My father was a scientist so I inherited a natural curiosity for what we cannot see with the naked eye. Loss determines the people that we become and the loss of my mother at a young age meant that in navigating my life I had to piece together a resilient female self-image of my own. Winning art prizes from the age of 4 meant that I never had the dilemma of questioning what I was going to become. I always knew that I was a painter although it wasn\u2019t considered a career choice at that time. As a consequence, my early working life began in interior design before undertaking my BA(Hons) in Graphic Design and Illustration at Kingston. The opportunity of a scholarship to the Royal College of Art was adjourned until I could financially support myself, hence I worked in a variety of jobs including a design consultancy in London. Freelance painting commissions offered a way to fulfill my love of painting. It was while working in art direction for film that I finally made a commitment to painting full-time. I returned to school and undertook an MA at The City & Guilds of London Art School before completing a Professional Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London with the support of da Vinci Artists Brushes and Schmincke. It\u2019s been a challenging journey late in life but reflecting back, it\u2019s a validation that if we are willing to live fearlessly then we can all become the person that we always wanted to be.

NY Glam:<\/strong> NY Glam:<\/strong> What projects are you currently working on? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the pandemic drew the world to a standstill, I was working on a project in collaboration with Leukaemia UK and Imperial College, London. The end goal being to create a series of exhibitions to raise awareness of HTLV-1 virus and make a film about a rather high-profile leukaemia survivor. Global data indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, and charities have been many of the hardest hit so I am continuing to create the works with a view to advancing the project when time permits. I\u2019m also part of a collective of artists who I studied with during my doctorate so plans for our next exhibition post lockdown are in progress. Last year I was officially made a brand ambassador for da Vinci Artist\u2019s Brushes plus I also work with art consultants and a gallery, so life is pretty busy.

NY Glam:<\/strong> NY Glam:<\/strong> What art do you most identify with? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painting and film. I\u2019m interested in artists whose practice is deeply rooted in the experience of process. There also has to be a certain silence to the work, something transcendent that goes deeper beyond colour and space. Transformative. Mark Rothko, Newman and Bill Viola\u2019s work all address the bigger questions, the mystery of life and the tragedy of the human condition. For me, evoking what I perceive to be invisible, intangible and unpresentable, although recognized by the senses, have become fundamental concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What themes do you pursue? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m interested in the body and the crossovers between science, medicine and art along with the history of the sublime in aesthetics. For decades I\u2019ve struggled with medical intervention in managing Keratitis, a viral inflammation of the cornea that can eventually cause blindness. Discovering that the virus responsible for vision loss in one eye, is now serving as a digital avatar in the fight to cure cancer and other inherited diseases, opened the timely world of genomics and virology to me. Fascinated by the paradox of a virus\u2019 ability to \u2018kill\u2019 or \u2018cure\u2019 led me to explore how genomic medicine is opening the doors towards personalised medicine. With new technologies enabling us to monitor our own bodies and next generation sequencing drawing transformational change within mainstream healthcare, I question how it will be to be human in the future. This in turn affects any of us who interact with medicine so I want to show immediate medical issues in a new way.

NY Glam:<\/strong> NY Glam:<\/strong> What\u2019s your favorite art work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a\nhistorical sense, Gauguin\u2019s monumental painting Where Do We Come From? What\nAre We? Where Are We Going? <\/em>1848-1903. I was overwhelmed by the sheer scale\nand the meaning behind this painting when I went to see it in the Museum of\nFine Arts Boston. Like many artists including myself, Gauguin was interested in\nthe fundamental questions of the body through birth, life and death and of what\nlies beyond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a contemporary context Bill Viola\u2019s Tristan\u2019s\nAscension<\/em> is a work which moves me to tears every time I watch it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> Tells us about some of your recent exhibitions. What memorable responses have you had to your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was invited to create a solo show \u2018Of Blooded Things\u2019<\/em> as part of\nImperial Festival, Imperial College, London. The opportunity of having two\nleading scientists from Imperial join me in conversation during the show led to\nmany interesting responses to the work. While many scientists read the work\nfrom an academic standpoint, they were still often deeply moved by the\npaintings. Some found solace in the works while others were intrigued to\nunderstand the science behind them. Cherry Smyth wrote the essay for the show;\n\u2018By inhabiting the viral\nsublime of her imagination, Morris\u2019 paintings take us into \u2018a far more than\nher\u2019, an immensely rich seam of knowledge at a new turning-point in medical\nscience which is rarely represented in visual art\u2019<\/em>. \u2018Of Blooded Things: the\npaintings of Suzi Morris,<\/a> Cherry Smyth, art writer and poet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my collectors wept\nin front of a painting which he and his wife had commissioned. There could not\nhave been a greater validation for me that this painting was a success, and I\ndon\u2019t always feel that way. I\u2019m always overly self-critical of my paintings!\nPerhaps that\u2019s being very \u2018British?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> Tell us about one of your projects which you are very proud of? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wellcome\nTrust<\/a> invited me as a sole artist to\npresent at a Virus, Genomics and Evolution conference in Cambridge. Presenting\nat this event co-authoring a paper with my supervisor Professor Faye Brauer, offered\nme the opportunity to hear responses to my work, that later fed into my\npractice. I had just completed a series of works titled The Families<\/em>. The\nFamilies<\/em><\/a> is a series of nine\naluminium panels, each work corresponding to a viral family under clinical\ninvestigation using viruses as avatars in the treatment of cancer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beauty and destructiveness of viruses had increasingly\nbecome a source of fascination as I drew homologies between the inherent\nunpredictable characteristics of oil pigment, which is not disparate from the\nconduct of viral behaviour in the body. As virotherapy uses natural or\nengineered oncolytic viruses to selectively kill tumour cells in the treatment\nof terminal diseases, a virus being put to therapeutic use is such a paradox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paintings never seek to illustrate; rather an\nunderlying reference is of a perceptual view of scientific reality within the\n\u2018invisible\u2019 world. Through investing the paintings with a sensibility, they\nbecome a game of interpretation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time scientists at Imperial College, London, were exploring nine viral families Rhabdoviridae, Herpesviridae, Poxviridae, Reoviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Picornaviridae, Adenoviridae, Parvoviridae and Retroviridae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suzi Morris Phylogenetic Tree of Life Oil on_aluminium_61 x 46 cm_Photoby@paulgreenleaf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What does \u201cbeing creative\u201d mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art\nhas a tremendous power to move people and hopefully trigger something that\ncauses us to question and try to understand. Being\ncreative for me is about raising questions and generating ideas connected to\nwhat\u2019s happening in the world. Presenting different ways of seeing and creating\nsomething that previously didn\u2019t exist. I think as a creative we have to be\nwilling to take risks, deal with uncertainty and the potential for failure.\nIt\u2019s about allowing the work to be transformative and embracing the unknown no\nmatter what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What are you trying to communicate with your art?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npaintings are deeply rooted in a process rife with ideas and feelings on being\nhuman. There is something much deeper beyond the colour that I want to share. Conceivably,\nthe work might function in helping to socialise the genome as personalised\nmedicine enters mainstream healthcare. Or they may help us to see in new ways\nand understand that which is difficult to see, making the invisible visible. Through exterior\nobservation of science and my imaginary interior perception of the frailty of\nmy body, the most emotive aspect of painting becomes paint itself. Problems of\nthe body are universal, so through encompassing layers of glaze over time,\nintermingled with smearing and daubing of colour in conjunction with\nimagining, sensing, memory and perceiving, my practice has become defined by\nthe process through which I make sense of my lived bodily experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given my interest in science and the sublime, the rapid rate of new discoveries\nin genomics and virology, has led to the sublime acquiring a sense of\nadditional urgency. It remains a force that shapes our contemporary culture of\nanxiety and fear. The pandemic and vaccine hesitancy are prime examples. While\nthe types of fear that we experience today may have changed, politically and\nculturally, and even though it is difficult to quantify a phenomenon, I argue\nthat the legacy of the notion of the sublime may be experienced as much today in\nterms of the Viral Sublime<\/em> as it was in the eighteenth century but in\ndifferent ways. I\u2019m really looking to make science into something more\nemotionally evocative, something visceral, and more capable of triggering\nawareness to key changes in the revolutionary ways that medicine is changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What role does the Artist have in Society?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists are capable of helping people to see the\nworld from a different perspective and share the potential to influence culture, politics, and even the\neconomy through art making. We can shed light on\nimportant issues. During the pandemic\nI really wanted to find a way to make a tangible difference. I knew just enough\nabout virology to understand how new biotechnologies would be being used in the\ndevelopment of a vaccine. So, I drew upon my interest in viruses and my\nconnection with Imperial College, London to raise money for the Imperial\nCollege COVID-19 Response Fund. I made a short film<\/a>\nin isolation in my studio to call out for support. Through exposing my own battle\nwith viral keratitis and pledging 50% of the proceeds of some of my smaller\npaintings, thankfully the press and Aesthetica Magazine<\/a> published my story, and those collectors who purchased\nmy paintings helped towards funding the vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What are your thoughts on being an artist in today\u2019s world?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being an artist today is very different from when I was first at art\nschool in the eighties. New technologies social media, and the internet enable\nartists to connect independently at a global level now. The opportunities are\nso much greater making being a full-time artist much more possible now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> How has painting influenced your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painting is a means to make sense of my lived\nexperience. Having travelled extensively and dealt with ill health, I\u2019ve\nwitnessed atrocities of human behaviour that slip beyond my own and\nconventional understanding. The act of painting enables me to process what\u2019s\nhappening externally in the world and turn it into something of value that\nmoves people. My paintings have become an embodiment of exploring the imagined\ninner landscape of my body. When I\u2019m painting it\u2019s as if I\u2019m no longer burdened\nby the actual working body; the process of manipulating paint somehow engenders\na resurrection within invisible energies and expansion. My world is invisibly\nordered by virology through managing my condition while abstraction points to\nan interior state of being and recognizes different possibilities within us. Being\nabsorbed in a painting which is more than human scale is significant for me in\nthat it helps me to re-order my internal life and share something of meaning\nand significance with the external world.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What art movement or artist would you say influences your work most?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orphism tells us much about the nature of art in\nsociety in regard to the beginnings of abstraction and its key concerns being\nto raise consciousness. Highly influenced by science, technology, and\nliterature, the Orphists dispensed with recognisable subject matter and relied\non form and colour alone to communicate meaning. The Orphism movement marked\nthe beginning of painting that was independent of any reference to the visible\nobjective world. Their concerns with consciousness and curiosity with the\nunseen and the scientific, may explain as much about the function of art in the\nearly twentieth century as it can today. It occurs to me how the influence of\nthe new sciences and genomics is as key to situating my practice as the\ndiscovery of microbes, x-rays and unseen energies was for artists such as\nOdilon Redon and Franti\u0161ek Kupka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> As a filmmaker, what is the most important aspect of building a movie? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a really good narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suzi Morris Waiting for CRISPR Oil on canvas and aluminium_190 x 140 cm_Photoby_@paulgreenleaf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What are your ambitions for your filmmaking career?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much as I\nenjoyed the time that I spent working with Fact Not Fiction Films<\/a>, since featuring in The Residency<\/em><\/a> documentary, most of my work with film now is related\nto teaching. Becoming an ambassador for da Vinci Artist\u2019s Brushes and working\nwith Schmincke has brought opportunities to share oil painting tips with other\nartists and highlight different ways of working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> Film or painting? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much as I\nlove film, painting will always be my passion in life. It\u2019s the inherent\nnatural qualities in oil paint that enable painting to become a bodily\nexperience which is so transformative. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n


NY Glam:<\/strong> What can we expect from you this year?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in the\nprocess of creating works for my next solo show. When I first showed the Viral\nSublime<\/em> series in my solo show in London in 2017, the chaos that viruses\nwreak on human welfare was not widely thought about. The work of scientists has\nbecome part of everyday news over the past year. Post the global pandemic I\u2019m\ninterested to see the response to my paintings in a different context now that\nwe are having to learn to live with awareness of SARS-CoV-2 and the potential\nfor new variants. I\u2019m also excited to be working towards a collaboration with Armenian\ndancer, poet, writer and educator, Celeste Snowber, PhD. Further updates and\nnews of upcoming shows can be seen on my website at https:\/\/www.suzimorrisart.com\/<\/a> and on Instagram @suzimorrisart<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exclusive Interview with Suzi Morris’ – Filmmaker & Painter Suzi Morris\u2019 paintings resonate with the spirit of scientific discovery whilst exploring the relationship between the unpredictable inner landscape of the body and paint. \u2018Self\u2019 is metamorphosed as \u2018I\u2019, a painted line which appears singularly or repeated, emerging in some works from dense networks of swirling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19176,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9193\/revisions\/19176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}