Morrison's 1994 trip to Grize Fjord, one of the world's coldest inhabited regions, served as the inspiration for the Arctic Mural. He lived in this area with an Inuit tribe that had been forcibly relocated there in 1953 for geopolitical reasons. He was always painting alongside an elderly Inuit woman who was shooting seals for food as they surfaced. The contrast between his calm photographs and the brutal setting brought home how difficult both physically and mentally these excursions were.

For an exhibition that art historian Professor Duncan Macmillan had commissioned, Morrison painted the Arctic Mural on location at the Talbot Rice Gallery when he was back in Edinburgh. The Mural serves not just as a sublime representation of Grize Fjord but with its black, reflective surfaces also evokes his despair at the future of the planet.

James Morrison RSA RSW, 1932-2020

Born in Glasgow, Morrison studied at Glasgow School of Art under David Donaldson from 1950 to 1954. He taught part-time there until 1958, when he moved to Catterline, near Stonehaven, Kincardineshire. He was visiting artist at Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Angus, in 1962-63. In 1965 he became a teacher at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. He visited Greece on an Arts Council travelling scholarship in 1968 and has travelled widely in France. In 1987 he resigned as Head of Department to concentrate on his painting. 

Morrison is best known for his panoramic landscapes, particularly of Angus and Canada, many spectacular cloud formations. He is also noted for his paintings of Glasgow's Victorian tenements and terraces, which he started as a student and continued until about 1980.