Nick Morris was told to give up art – he didn’t

ART has never been a hobby for Nick Morris. It has been a lifeline.

The Torquay artist has spent decades moving between commercial design, surf culture and fine art, returning time and again to the canvas that first captured his imagination as a child.

“I don’t know if I’d even be here to be honest without it,” he said.

“You need joy, and without it, you question elements of life.

“When you’re doing what you love, your body ages half the time. You get lost and you don’t know what’s happening.

“When I paint, the only things that matter are me and that canvas. It’s meditation and being 100 per cent present.”

 

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.

What should have been a defining moment instead became memorable for another reason entirely.

A teacher dismissed his dream of becoming an artist, a comment that stayed with him for decades.

“It took all my belief to override the fact that she didn’t believe I could do it,” Morris said.

“I knew I wanted to do it, but that comment of ‘Don’t do it. You won’t make it’, really kept me going.

 

“Whether its writing, painting, music, you can’t fight the feeling. The dam breaks, and you can’t compromise no more.”

Practicality eventually won out, with Morris turning to graphic design at a time when fine art offered few guarantees.

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.

A series of conversations with friend Dave Bowers eventually led to the creation of surf label Umgawa, which grew rapidly during the 1990s.

“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.

 

“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.

“Within a year we had $800,000 worth of orders on the books, which in 1995 was a s**tload of money.

“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.”

Quiksilver followed, with his artistic direction spurring on the next generation of merchandise for the surf giant.

“I was super inspired by Peter Webb and Simon Buttonshaw,” Morris said.

 

“I tried to come in with a fresh perspective and with my unique experience on the computer with Umgawa.

“Along the way, a bit of the hand-art DNA was lost, which was initially the reason I was attracted to the business.

“The uniqueness was not the same ever again once computer technology took over.”

Driven by a desire to run his own show, Morris moved into freelance work.

“I wanted to surf for longer if it was pumping,” he said.

 

“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.”

When fellow creatives decided to promote an exhibition, Morris’s quirky ideas and screen-printing skills were in high demand.

That creative resurgence gave rise to “Doug Bartlett”, a collaborative artistic identity Morris created with Bowers.

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”.

The approach resonated. Under the Doug Bartlett banner, Morris and Bowers exhibited around the country and built a strong following.

 

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.

“She just instilled this belief in me, and we ran our own exhibitions, and it just took off,” he said.

“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.

“That point in time was incredibly powerful and really set the scene for the success to come.”

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.

 

“It was against my better judgement really. It was like being a cowboy and robbing a bank and riding out,” he said.

“The GFC [global financial crisis] hit soon after, and art became incredibly volatile. People need fridges and beds, but they don’t need art.

“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.”

For Morris, art remains a constant, even through life’s inevitable ups and downs.

 

“Art is all about moving forward,” he said. “I can’t see the joy of doing the same thing all the time, so you’ve got to explore that creativity and forever evolve.

“The past doesn’t exist as such, and the future doesn’t either. Art lets me find that sweet spot of now. It’s critical to my being and makes me tick, so I’ve pursued it.”

Today, Morris works from his Torquay studio, drawing inspiration from both his travels and the landscapes of the Surf Coast.

“Point Addis to me is ultimate solitude, it’s a healing place, so I’ve painted that many times,” he said.

 

“The pop art during Doug Bartlett was frenetic, but now I’m back to drawing things that give me peace.

“The ocean gives me peace, nature gives me peace and I want to carry out my truth and who I am becoming.”

His next chapter will take him to Tasmania, where he plans to establish a studio in the coastal town of Scamander.

“My next move will take it to the next level,” Morris said.

“I’ll become a hermit in the hills, paint and surf. I can’t wait.”