Ami Morris is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist whose integrative practice spans painting and sculpture. From sourcing materials to putting down brush strokes, Ami bears an intrinsic dialogue with her own intuition. Her process includes collecting discarded objects found on the street or in op-shops and finding inspired ways of incorporating them into her practice. All objects and environments, she says, possess innate languages which she explores and deciphers through the development of her art.  
 
Ami was the first artist to exhibit at Oigåll Projects here in Melbourne, with her show Further Thoughts (2021) and then recently again, five years later, with The night garden. It is a thrill to see the transformation of Ami's practice across the two periods. One thing that persists is evidence of a durational process—where layer upon layer of material allow a visual and conceptual depth only time can produce. The cousinly shows capture Ami's changing perceptions of the world around her, serving as physical expressions of her internal reflections. While the two shows are visually distinct from one another, Ami's undying connection to her inner world prevails.  
 
My...mission over the last year...has just been to trust myself and to trust what my energy is telling me. To be happy with the relationship I have with art, and [not to] question it... 
 
The Chapman and Bailey marketing team had the pleasure of spending a gloomy Melbourne morning in the studio with Ami Morris. Every surface of the room is splattered with pink and purple, and a pair of wigs hang on the southern wall. Ami, too adorned in stains of the same girlish hues, is parked in front of a heat plate on which a pot bubbles with an igneous material. 

Ami is taking us through her creative process with encaustic wax, an ancient beeswax-based painting medium. It is customary to apply the hot wax onto a solid, flat surface like wood or stone. Instead, Ami uses the molten medium—tinted with powdered pigments, oil sticks and paints—to encase and build upon found material.  
 
Teetering precariously on a makeshift turntable—a 10-level pile of upside-down dinner plates—sits a sculpture in the making. The form presents like an unpolished crystal, raw and mystifying. At her cauldron, Ami has dipped torn pieces of recycled paper into the melted encaustic wax medium, then laid them across a mesh armature of sorts. Now dry and mostly solid, we observe Ami paint, drip and massage layers of tinted wax upon the forming shape. Sculpture is new to Ami, something she has not yet vanquished but which has been the subject of long-term intrigue. She names Cy Twombley as a key inspiration in both her sculptures and paintings—a palpable relationship for anyone who has observed both artists’ oeuvres. 

On her paintings, Ami uses cold wax medium. Once applied to the canvas, it creates dimension through its ultra-matte finish, only exaggerated when used in conjunction with thick, slick oil paints. She allows gaps between the many dark, expressive strokes which cover the large canvas, exposing glimpses of a bright and colourful underneath—a shielded vivacity.  

Products used by Ami include 

R&F drawing oil sticks, 

powdered pigment, 

encaustic medium, encaustic paints

Gamblin cold wax medium.