About

British artist Sophie Morrish, utilises a diverse number of approaches within a practice characterised by curiosity, experimentation, abstraction and an openness to unconventional materials and techniques. Formal aspects of her work have been directly influenced by a long standing love of, and appreciation for, painting - both historical and contemporary. Guided by this perspective, the artist considers much of her earlier work as ‘painting in the expanded field’ - whatever the media in which it has been made.

More recently, Morrish has chosen to situate her art practice in a studio-based, materially-driven exploration of paint and painting. This work is fundamentally rooted in curiosity; equally embracing, risk, failure and discovery as central components of creativity.

During 2024-25, Morrish completed a painting mentorship through ‘Turps Banana’ (an independent painting school/magazine and mentoring scheme based in London, run by artist painters, for painters); through this she has become attentive to certain paradoxical aspects of painting - aware that (at its inception at least), it is simultaneously ‘private’ and ‘performative’, she states:

“I have come to realise that I am in thrall to paint’scapacity to both hold and express, self-reflective and empirical activity”.

Living in Scotland for nearly three decades, Morrish has developed both studio and field-based programmes of learning focused on engagement with the natural environment. Variously, through exploration of the phenomenal experience of landscape, Morrish has fore-fronted valuing nature for its own sake. Complimenting her artistic practice, her work in education has focused on deepening understanding of our relationship to and as a part of the natural world. 

For twelve years Morrish worked as a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art, until in 2007, she relocated to North Uist, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. Here, alongside her own creative practice, she continued her commitment to art, education and nature, working for the University of the Highlands and Islands. 

Morrish has taught a broad spectrum of learners throughout the U.K. ; Prisoners in HMP Brixton, London, primary school children, undergraduates, Masters and PhD students. 

Internationally she has taught in India, at the Mahraja Sayajirao University, Vadodra and in China, at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing.