Every month Brave Island runs a Young Creative of the Month fund, where we spotlight a local young creative with an interview on our blog, and support them with funding of £100. For October, it’s Poppy Morris. This fund launches at the beginning of every month, you can apply to be Young Creative of the Month for November here.
Please can you tell us about your creative practice?
I know many people may hear this, but it’s true! I have been creating art since I was very small, I had a little striped sketchbook which I filled with scribbles and potato-looking people, and I remember doing lots of arts and crafts growing up. I loved art throughout primary school and chose to study art for one of my GCSEs and A-levels before doing my Art Foundation. Now I am in my 2nd year of university working hard towards my degree in BA Illustration at Falmouth, and I have already learnt so much. My work has always been inspired by nature and I have always found people and history very interesting, but in the last few years of my creative journey, I feel I have really begun exploring this side of my passion in my work, and I have so many ideas that I am buzzing to put onto paper.
I use a variety of materials to create my work including coloured pencils, watercolours, fine-liners, alcohol markers, gouache, collage, oil pastels and different print-making techniques. Recently, I have been experimenting with texture in my work, which I had fun exploring in my first university project of 2nd year! I love to create in any way I can, not only painting and drawing but also printmaking and a little bit of wood carving! I always find it difficult to describe my ‘creative practice’ as something standard I usually do, as it’s constantly evolving (especially since starting university) but I find this so exciting as my journey is only just beginning as an illustrator and I have so much more to learn, explore and play with!
Your work involves a recurring theme of history and the natural world, where did this inspiration come from?
I have been passionate about the natural world and history ever since I was younger. As a child, my parents always encouraged me and my siblings to get outside, and we often explored streams and looked under logs to see what we could find. Living on the Isle of Wight, it’s difficult to not find some sort of contact with nature. For a while growing up, I wanted to be an Entomologist so I often drew caterpillars and spiders I saw in the garden, and I would sketch the exotic insects and butterflies I had in my display cases. I am still fascinated by the intricacies of insects and the natural world in general, but now I get to explore it in a different light and place what I see into my work.
My interest in history comes from my constant curiosity about the past. I see old photographs, hear old stories and ask myself questions; I wonder who these people were. What their lives were like? What were they thinking at the time? For my final art foundation project, I explored the ‘forgotten history’ of the Isle of Wight. I explored and photographed multiple abandoned buildings before selecting one to base my final piece on. Stepping into the run-down house felt uneasy as lots of the previous owner’s belongings were still there. And again, I found myself asking questions; why was the house not taken over? What was the last thing the owner did there before passing on? How long has the house been left to ruin? I used Facebook to reach out and ask about the man who used to live there and found it so fascinating that all this had been left behind. Again, it boiled down to using my work to bring this man’s story back to life, and this is something I really want to explore further. It’s not just major, well-known historical events I find interest in, but also the lesser-known stories of individual people, their lives, and their experiences that I want to learn about.
Where do you find out about the people and creatures that inspire your work, and how do you decide which ones to choose?
I’ve really been pushing myself to get out and about, drawing from real life, it’s such an important practice to have as an artist. I keep a small sketchbook in my bag and draw in nature whenever I can. Alongside this, I have been using my camera to photograph birds, landscapes, plants etc to help build a little catalogue of images I can use to inspire my work.
Technology and social media can also be great tools for discovering all the different people, creatures and nature that inspire my work. I follow a Facebook group for the Island’s history and love to see people’s stories and photographs of growing up on the Island, or their own knowledge of the Island’s forgotten history. Instagram pages like the BBC archive are also great ones, and I love to watch documentaries based on nature and history.
I recently created a painting of an extinct Hawaiian bird known as the Kaua’i ōō. I saw an animation on YouTube about this bird and its beautiful call (if you haven’t heard it, I definitely recommend you give it a listen!). I saw this video about a year ago and always come back to it out of curiosity and interest. It made me feel so heartbroken this beautiful bird had been around for so long and was now wiped from existence, which inspired me to create the painting. Not only to honour it in a way but to share it with others who may not know about it, which felt like briefly bringing the Kaua’i ōō back to life.
Books are another massive inspiration! I recently purchased Nora Krug’s book ‘Belonging’ (‘Heimat’ in German) which is a visual memoir where she explores her German heritage and her family’s involvement in the war. It’s so beautiful and makes me really passionate to find out more about my own family’s history. It’s scary to think all this information can be lost through the generations and it has inspired me to explore how I could preserve and record my family’s heritage. Whenever I talk about my work, I notice it all tends to come back to keeping stories alive and bringing old ones back to life, which is why I am so passionate about doing illustration.
In terms of how I decide which ones to choose, it’s usually down to what I feel most drawn to! Or people/creatures that I feel need more recognition/education around. Sometimes it may not be as complex as that, and something about it may just spark my interest, it could be anything from the story surrounding a person to the colours of an exotic bird. Inspiration can come from everywhere!
Where can people find your work if they’d like to support you?
Instagram: @poppymorrisillustration Definitely check it out if you’d like to see more of my work as I share lots of it there, with updates on my personal work and my current university projects!
