In his new exhibition, Birmingham-based painter Shaun Morris explores empty and everyday spaces across the West Midlands, which aren’t typically visited as destinations but passed through.

For his major solo show, Autofictions, at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, Morris has visited late-night truck stops, his local high street, and Birmingham’s parks. Both rural and urban scenes appear in 15 oil paintings, which the artist has made over the last decade.

Through his painterly style, Morris manipulates a sense of ambiguity, working at the intersection of abstraction and realism.

Describing his work, Morris says: “My paintings are largely based on my own direct observations of the community I live in and grew up in, while suggesting some underlying narrative element. Across this exhibition are Autofictions waiting to unfold”

An inspiration for this body of work was the book Edgelands, in which poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts reframe gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites as richly mysterious, forgotten regions in our midst.

Having grown up in the Black Country, he witnessed its deindustrialisation during the 70s and 80s. Factories disappeared, sites were abandoned, landscapes unoccupied. But even in geometric patterns of motorway bridges, he finds the everyday sublime.

“These are the places I know”, he adds. He particularly likes to wander through them after dark. “Things look so different at night, it’s a different experience, and I like the quietness, when things look more uncanny.”

Shaun Morris: Autofictions will be at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry from Mon 2 Mar – Sat 14 Mar.