Introduction John Morrison

Introduction

JAmES mORRISON BY JOHN mORRISON

James Morrison painting at Balnakeil Bay, c.2007 I am delighted to have been asked to write the introduction to celebrate my father’s work. Since he died, I have been organising and cataloguing the archive of material left in his studio. There is a considerable amount of it, but its organisation was always undertaken by my mother. It has become somewhat chaotic in the time between her death in 2006 and my father’s passing in August 2020. In looking at the material I was genuinely astonished to find a collection of almost 20 diaries documenting and discussing his painting life since the late 1950s. I had no knowledge of their existence. They have deepened and enriched my knowledge and understanding of my father and his work enormously. Frustratingly though, I’m left with a lot of questions I’d love to have been able to ask him, things I’d have loved to debate with him.

Apart from the diaries there is, for me, a treasure chest of memorabilia of a life. Lectures given, exhibitions described, art-school classes designed, catalogues collected. I’d like to draw on that material and rather than give some opinion of my own, I want to offer an account of my father’s working given by a very old friend of his. For all his committed atheism my father had a number of very close friends who were Christian ministers, or lay preachers. One of the earliest was, Rev. Dr Ian M. Fraser. My father met him through being invited to debate Christianity and atheism at Scottish Churches House in Dunblane. Rev. Dr Fraser was Warden at SCH for a time in the early 1960s.

In 1968 there was a service to mark the second anniversary of the creation of Heriot-Watt University. The following is an extract from the sermon preached on that occasion by Rev. Dr Fraser. The views expressed are an honest account of my father’s thinking and practice. They were as true when he died as they were when they were explained, 50 years earlier.

‘A week or two ago I spent some hours with an agnostic artist friend of mine. We were looking at the type of work to which the artist, the theologian, and the scientist respectively set their hands.

James Morrison painting at Otto Fiord, Canadian High Arctic, 1992

I asked him if he felt his work was an attempt to get some grip on reality – to sketch out some clues to help those who examined his work to discover meaning in living. He was quick to say that he found no need to believe that reality lay outside human life, in some other being or power. He talked about his approach: and we got an inkling of the community of search and exploration which characterises all serious branches of knowledge and service.

Something like a boat down on the shore would catch his attention. He would feel the need to get on to canvas or to sketch the impression made on him. Then fifteen, twenty attempts might be made to express what had made impact. Some would be torn up and discarded. Some would be inadequate yet contain some element or insight which he felt got him at least some distance along the road. Then one day he would get it nearly as he wanted it. He was never completely satisfied – but he would feel that now his main statement had been made. As an honest person he said to me “Sometimes when it clicks like that my mind seems to be out of gear and some other hand is taking control of mine” and added “Mind you I don’t think anything comes from the beyond. Rather all my previous attempts, my struggle to get understanding, come to a point of clarity of vision.”

The artist ended with a sigh: “Do you know who I envy? The technologist. Imagine getting a chance to build a suspension bridge. You can gather into it all the theories about suspension bridges which have proved their worth up to the very point of building. Fancy being able to undertake an act of creation of that kind and at the end to stand back and say “It’s there. It gathers into it all we know and can express. It works.”

Painting is a provisional accomplishment. The artist can never quite say: “I have got there.”’

JOHN mORRISON · 2022