The artist Victoria Morton creates large-scale, bold, bright and colourful paintings full of movement and energy. Some of her work can also be seen as sculptural as in the free standing ‘Compartments for Isis’ painting from 2007. This work has been on display twice over the years in GoMA’s vast gallery 1 ground floor space (Echo and Transcend, 2010, and Devils in the Making, 2016).

Victoria Morton was born in 1971 and studied at the Glasgow School of Art. Her most recent solo exhibition was in 2019 at the Modern Institute in Glasgow.

Take inspiration from her work to create your own free standing work of art with materials found around your house. Take a look at some examples of Morton’s paintings to get a feel for the colours and textures that make up her paintings.

You will need:

• recyclable materials such as cereal boxes, toilet roll tubes, newspapers.
• colouring materials, such as felt tips paint, crayons etc…
• glue stick or PVA glue

First of all create your free-standing canvas with something like a cereal packet. Cut off the sides so that you have 2xA4 panels that are joined in the middle (this can stand up easily on its side – landscape).

Then gather together all of your art materials and different types of paper and cut out lots of different colours and textures that you can use for your collage. You can use crayons, felt tips, or paint to add the colours you want to plain paper or cardboard, like we did on a toilet paper tube.

Now you have a pile of different coloured papers – have fun creating your colourful collage by sticking them on top of your cereal box canvas. It doesn’t need to look like anything at all, just piece together the different colours anyway you like. Try to consider the range of colours that you are using so that they work well together. Victoria Morton’s paintings work well due to the lovely range of one colour scheme such as reds or pinks. The addition of a clashing colour such as luminous green can also work really well. 

How does your collage look? Share it with us on social media, #SaturdayArtClub