About Raymond Morris
Artist Bio
I was born in Crawley, a place my mother jokingly described as “a social experiment gone wrong.” My early life was shaped by the loss of my father, an engineer and mathematical mind who died at 34 from rheumatic fever. His death deeply impacted my mother—a gifted artist and singer discovered as a child prodigy by a member of the Courtauld family. After his passing, her mental health declined and she turned to alcohol, putting a halt to her creativity and forcing her into factory work while I was placed in nursery care.
Despite a turbulent home life and early struggles with dyslexia (misunderstood at the time as behavioral issues), I found solace in art. I began painting at six and won my first competition at 11 with a portrait of an African woman in ornate headdress. Art was my way out of the chaos, a constant when nothing else made sense.
At 17, I was creating prolifically—painting and sculpting—until a misunderstood comment from a teacher led me to stop altogether. It wasn’t until my fifties, after the tragic loss of my partner of 24 years, that I began creating again. Since then, I’ve exhibited in Brick Lane, Clapham, and Málaga, and I’m currently organising a large exhibition in Northern Italy.
My work draws on surrealism and abstraction, inspired by artists like Dali, König, and the technical mastery of da Vinci and Cavaraggio. I use a range of mediums—oil, acrylic, oil pastel, ash from fires, coffee, food wrappers—whatever feels right in the moment.
I’m also a poet and currently writing a film script. Art, in all its forms, remains my way of processing a complex world—and sharing what I find in the wreckage and the wonder.
Artist Statement
Art has always been a survival instinct for me—an escape, a mirror, a kind of rebellion against chaos. I began painting as a child in a turbulent home, finding in colour and shape a sense of order and clarity that real life rarely offered. Creativity was not a luxury; it was a necessity.
My work is driven by emotion, memory, and transformation. I’m drawn to the surreal and the abstract—worlds where contradiction lives naturally. My influences range from Salvador Dalí and Caravaggio to scraps of packaging found on the street. I work with oil, acrylic, pastels, ash, coffee, fire residue—whatever the piece demands. Materials matter less to me than the energy behind them. After a long silence in my artistic journey, I returned to making art in my fifties, following the loss of my partner of 24 years. That grief reignited something I’d buried. Since then, art has become not just personal expression but also a way of connecting—with the past, with others, and with myself. I'm not fixed in one style. I let the work decide. Some pieces are loud, chaotic collages made from discarded wrappers; others are quiet studies of light and shadow. What unites them is the attempt to make meaning from mess—to find beauty in what’s broken. Art, for me, is not therapy. It’s transformation. It’s the act of turning memory into myth, and pain into something that can be shared.