ARTISTS & MAKERS OF FROME WITH DAN MORLEY
W
e talk to fine artist Dan Morley about his past as a chocolatier, why realism speaks to him, and how he finally felt at home when he came to Frome.
What made you follow this path? Ever since I left school, I always felt like I should be an artist, but to be honest, it’s not really a career choice that people encourage. After many years of being a hobby artist, I realised that I wouldn’t be happy in life unless I was making art as much as possible, which led me to the conclusion that I need to do it as a full-time job. What is your physical creative process? What materials and techniques do you use? I’m mainly a painter, although I do some printmaking here and there. I pretty much just stick to oil paints. My work centres on realism techniques; I’ve always enjoyed the immediacy that people can relate to realism, you don’t need a lengthy essay to explain it. You can take it at face value and dive deeper if you prefer.
What is your artistic background? I always dabbled around from an early age, drawing and making things. I did art GSCE which was by far my favourite lesson, and was fortunate to have a very supportive art teacher who just let me do what I wanted. It wasn’t until I turned thirty that I decided to take art more seriously and turn it into a career. I looked at doing an online degree but decided it wasn’t what I wanted to learn. I even looked at the possibility of going to the Florence Academy but that was very expensive. In the end, I settled for some books that teach academy training and went from there; learning the foundational skills and putting in lots of hours of practice. 22
TH ELI S TFR O M E
A r tists and Makers of Frome
What inspires your work? I’m currently in a phase of transition in my work. It’s both exciting and a little daunting. The work I have been doing focussed on small objects, things I’d find or be given, some natural and some man-made. I’ve been doing these small paintings for some time now and have decided it’s time for a change. Currently, I’m working on outdoor scenes that are often unnoticed, things we pass every day but which wouldn’t normally be viewed as scenic or beautiful; I like doing things like that, it makes people rethink how they can see the world around them. I am currently working on a set of postcard-sized paintings, which will be exhibited at the WHY Gallery at the end of April, exploring this theme. How did lockdown affect the way you work and create? Lockdown gave me the final nudge I needed to take the leap into doing art full time. I had a small chocolate business before, which I put on hold when the first lockdown came, mainly due to lack of ingredients. There were loads of artists on Instagram
