Mostly Yorkshire

For many of us the prospect of a marriage lasting nearly fifty years seems like a major achievement, but to stay happily married, raise four children and also enjoy a creative partnership is something of a miracle. David and Margaret Morris are two such people. They met in the 1960’s at Harrogate Art School, where David was a new teacher fresh from Slade School of Art and Margaret was a second year student.

David first visited Staithes in 1954 as a young art student on a working holiday and his love of the North Yorkshire coast, and in particular out of the way places such as Port Mulgrave, stayed with him.  An early enjoyment of printmaking was revived through teaching the subject and David began to explore the subject of etching.  By contrast painting is a very direct medium.  David works mainly in oils and believes that “the abstract qualities of composition, colour and shape are as important as the description of a particular place and time of day”.

Margaret spent her childhood in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales on the farm that her family had worked for four generations.  Margaret gained a place at Harrogate School of Art and continued to draw and paint after she and David married.  As the children grew up, Margaret decided to return to art school and graduated in Art and Design in 1997, returning later to Bradford College to complete an MA course in printmaking.  Margaret is strongly influenced by her immediate surroundings and her work is inspired chiefly by the landscape.  She is drawn to the practice of printmaking because she feels that “it can provide a fresh and exciting language of marks that cannot be achieved in any other medium”.