The Sheffield artist bringing his work back home

Over the past 15 years, the Sheffield-based artist has established a global audience for his bold and intriguing images with solo exhibitions in such art meccas as Tokyo and New York.

Now he’s premiering new work as part of his first large-scale exhibition in his home town this summer. His new show, Auctorum, at the Millennium Gallery features paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and film from the last three years and is one of his most wide-ranging exhibitions to date.

Morrison draws inspiration for his work from the world around him, from engravings and botanical illustrations to comics and animation. He takes images which are woven together using digital software and while the subsequent pictures look familiar at first – a plant-strewn landscape perhaps, or a forested glade – closer inspection reveals oddities and contradictions.

“My work isn’t about real people and places, it’s more a collage of disparate images that come together,” he explains.

“I started off as a landscape painter, but I’m not the kind of artist who goes out with an easel. I’m influenced by what I see when I’m in a library or a second hand bookshop, or even the internet.”

He has amassed a huge archive of images that he dips into for his work. “I never considered myself to be simply a painter and for me art isn’t just about a single form, it’s about a variety of forms and I tend to follow my nose.”

Paul Morrison: Auctorum, at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery to November 4.