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Morris knew he wanted to be an artist from the age of six, after drawing a simple farm scene on a battered sheet of paper.<\/p>\n
What should have been a defining moment instead became memorable for another reason entirely.<\/p>\n
A teacher dismissed his dream of becoming an artist, a comment that stayed with him for decades.<\/p>\n
“It took all my belief to override the fact that she didn’t believe I could do it,” Morris said.<\/p>\n
“I knew I wanted to do it, but that comment of ‘Don’t do it. You won’t make it’, really kept me going.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Whether its writing, painting, music, you can’t fight the feeling. The dam breaks, and you can’t compromise no more.”<\/p>\n Practicality eventually won out, with Morris turning to graphic design at a time when fine art offered few guarantees.<\/p>\n He spent the next 25 years away from the paintbrush, producing licensed graphics featuring characters such as Garfield and Snoopy for major retailers including Target.<\/p>\n A series of conversations with friend Dave Bowers eventually led to the creation of surf label Umgawa, which grew rapidly during the 1990s.<\/p>\n “We wanted to be 100 per cent uninterrupted by someone telling us what the brief was. It was a longing to be a fine artist really,” Morris said said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “We were dying T-shirts in a rubbish bin out the back. It was not a high budget start up. We did one print each and it grew quickly.<\/p>\n “Within a year we had $800,000 worth of orders on the books, which in 1995 was a s**tload of money.<\/p>\n “We were naive, got involved with some people who weren’t in it for the right reasons, and that was it. It was a fun four to five years.”<\/p>\n Quiksilver followed, with his artistic direction spurring on the next generation of merchandise for the surf giant.<\/p>\n “I was super inspired by Peter Webb and Simon Buttonshaw,” Morris said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “I tried to come in with a fresh perspective and with my unique experience on the computer with Umgawa.<\/p>\n “Along the way, a bit of the hand-art DNA was lost, which was initially the reason I was attracted to the business.<\/p>\n “The uniqueness was not the same ever again once computer technology took over.”<\/p>\n Driven by a desire to run his own show, Morris moved into freelance work.<\/p>\n “I wanted to surf for longer if it was pumping,” he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “My number one rule was ‘If the surf is good, you go’. I’d work through the night if I had to, as long as I’d get to surf.”<\/p>\n When fellow creatives decided to promote an exhibition, Morris’s quirky ideas and screen-printing skills were in high demand.<\/p>\n That creative resurgence gave rise to “Doug Bartlett”, a collaborative artistic identity Morris created with Bowers.<\/p>\n Operating under the ethos of letting go and literally drawing over each other’s work, the duo could do “whatever the f**k they wanted”.<\/p>\n The approach resonated. Under the Doug Bartlett banner, Morris and Bowers exhibited around the country and built a strong following.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Morris said a life coach played a pivotal role during that period, helping him back himself as an artist and commit more seriously to his creative practice.<\/p>\n “She just instilled this belief in me, and we ran our own exhibitions, and it just took off,” he said.<\/p>\n “We established that I needed to still do graphics to support my family, so I dug deep and dedicated all my other days to painting.<\/p>\n “That point in time was incredibly powerful and really set the scene for the success to come.”<\/p>\n Morris described the mid-2000s as a “feeding frenzy”, with successful exhibitions sometimes generating more income in a weekend than six months of graphic design work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “It was against my better judgement really. It was like being a cowboy and robbing a bank and riding out,” he said.<\/p>\n “The GFC [global financial crisis] hit soon after, and art became incredibly volatile. People need fridges and beds, but they don’t need art.<\/p>\n “I sold a few boards at Quiksilver to keep the dream alive and we soldiered on for a while until I went back to full-time work.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/IMG_4080_12575.jpg\")
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