The world is full of contradiction and injustice; imbalance, inequality and hypocrisy. Tamsin Morse chooses picture making as a way of highlighting and upturning perceptions of acceptable codes of conduct through painting, using the gestures of body language to tell emotive stories of interaction. Infused with humour, the subject matter is quite serious; She sees herself very much as a storyteller, infusing images she finds online, through AI, or from magazines, imagination, and observational drawing. Having spent a long time working on national newspapers’ picture desks, Morse has a strong relationship with the press photo and is aware of how the tiniest adjustment in pose can tell a completely new emotion, and the power of the body to depict a message. Her paintings are scenes; the canvas a stage set. Subjects she approaches include imbalance of the sexists; power levels; territorial ambitions; hierarchy; the striving for compartmentalisation, labelling and definition of the self in pursuit of ‘fairness’ and consequential paradoxes. Morse is influenced by contemporary culture, news and political events, and her own experiences.
The use of animals reflects the animal that is base in us all, and how people see domesticated animals as echoes of their own thoughts; a useful tool for crass mitigation. The colours she uses border on toxicity and edge on the beautiful, reflecting the contradictions in the subject matter. It is Morse’s way of portraying injustice as a state of the world, sometimes in its tiniest form.