UWE, 2006
James Morton's work is imbued with the exciting and reactive immediacy of capturing a person at a specific moment in time. Characterful faces form the main terrain in which colours are manoeuvred across the canvas. Each face expresses the panoply of emotions available to humankind. Often starting with a photo, the final image leaves the photo to become something else entirely, as Morton uses gestural marks to push and pull individual features into an even deeper truth.
My work evolves from an interest in people, and a basic need to capture an expression at a given moment. I use old photographs of people in everyday life, and the people I see around me. Aiming to depict a vulnerability, or melancholy, these paintings often take on an ethereal quality. Although each painting starts from an image, the relationship between the marks takes over from the original photo, which is then rarely referenced again during the painting process.