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Bauhaus Mornings

I’ve always loved the Bauhaus idea that ordinary, useful things deserve to be beautifully made, no fuss, no waste, just good form doing its job. And there’s nothing more ordinary than a morning: the alarm you resent, the first coffee you don’t, the sun coming up over the rooftops whether you’re ready or not. Coming from where I do, that respect for the everyday runs deep. So I took those small, unglamorous moments and gave them the bold shapes and primary colours they deserve. Hang one in a kitchen or by the bed, somewhere a morning actually happens.

Hugo North at his studio easel, painting the first Bauhaus Mornings piece, a flat geometric sun above a grid of rooftops in red, blue and black — Hugo with the first concept piece, the sun that became City Sunrise.

How it began

Straight lines and first light

I’m not a morning person, but the studio is. I’d get in before six with a coffee going cold and watch the light arrive through the window in hard blocks, a square on the floor, a stripe up the wall, the sun a flat disc you could have cut out with scissors. No detail in it, just shape and colour turning up in order. So I stopped fighting it and started painting mornings the way they actually land: ruled off, flattened right down, primary and calm.

The piece on the easel is the first that held together, a sun over a grid of rooftops, masking tape still on the edges. That one became City Sunrise, and the rest of the collection grew out of the same half-hour before the day gets complicated: the alarm, the first coffee, the quiet. Ordinary things, squared off and handed a bit of dignity.

More about Hugo →

The craft

How I work

There’s a faster way to do all of this, but where I am from you can always tell when someone takes pride in their job. I’d rather make fewer things properly than a thousand things nearly.

Hugo mixing oil paint on a well-used palette in the studio

It starts with my hands

Every piece begins as a real painting in my studio near the Peaks, brush, ink, mistakes and all. If it didn’t start by hand, it wouldn’t be mine to sign.

A fine-art giclée print of an ink-brush cat emerging from a wide-format printer in the studio

Made when you order

I don’t keep a pile of prints in a warehouse. Yours is made when you ask for it, fine-art giclée on thick 280gsm FineArt Paper or premium canvas, with inks that will outlast the both of us.

Hands fitting a finished print into a handmade oak frame on the workbench

Framed properly, here

Hand-framed in Yorkshire by people who care about the job as much as I do. It takes a few days longer. I’d rather keep your wall waiting than let it down.

Hugo on a stool in the studio with his morning coffee

A day here is simple. Coffee first, nothing happens before that, then I open the blinds and look at yesterday’s work in the morning light, the most honest critic I know. The good hours are the quiet ones, radio on low, before the phone remembers I exist. And whatever kind of day it’s been, I clean every brush before I leave, partly respect for the tools, mostly because tomorrow’s work deserves a clean start.