Not ones you knew personally - or perhaps you did from a youth spent kicking around Berkeley in the 70's - but eyes that graced Australian screens for the better part of forty years - those of actor Geoff Morrell.

Morrell's career has spanned decades, from roles on home-grown police shows like Murder Call and Blue Heelers to stints on cult Aussie shows like Rake, and most recently, the actor garnered international acclaim for his role on Amazon's mega-budget The Lord of the Rings prequel series.

Despite his recent international success, the 64-year-old is still a Wollongong boy at heart - and six years ago, he made the circuitous move back to the town where he spent his high school years.

The actor, artist and musician now lives at Mount Keira, where he can often be found brush-deep in a pot of paint or carving a sheet of lino, pursuing the creative spark he's chased his whole life.

"It's something that I just can't not do, even though it's just a bothersome thing. I just can't not doodle. And people encourage me! I mean, it's a total pain in the neck," Morrell joked.

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Morrell is putting that spark on show in February, exhibiting a mind-bending array of original paintings and photographs super-imposed on top of one another at the Clifton School of Arts.

The exhibition was inspired by Morrell's time filming The Rings of Power in New Zealand, borne of endless hours waiting on sets with time to spare.

The series - which had a reported billion dollar production budget - filmed during the height of the COVID pandemic, and New Zealand's hard border landed Morrell in the country for almost 12 months straight.

"I thought, well, what am I going to do? I'm going to have a lot of downtime in New Zealand, because a lot of the time was not working," he said.

"Someone encouraged me to take paints, pencils and stuff, so while I was in quarantine, I started, and then I just kept going," he said.

Morrell started with paints, before he began toying with photography, double exposing photos of paintings just to see what came up.

"Sometimes it was a happy accident - the algorithm would sort of pick out certain things that were really one-off."

Many of the works are self portraits of his own Rings of Power character 'Waldreg', a striking, weathered man who works at the town tavern and joins forces with an Orc warlord.

Morrell also turned his creative eye to other members of the cast, and being Morrell's muse became a kind of "badge" among some, he said, and a long-lasting memento of the show.

Fellow Australian actor Charlie Vickers, who plays Halbrand and is later revealed as the iconic Lord of the Rings villain Sauron, makes an appearance in Morrell's exhibtion, as does Canadian Dylan Smith, who plays a type of hobbit called a Harfoot.

One of the most eye-catching pieces in the series is a self-portrait of Waldreg, whose eyes seem to bore right into the viewer's mind, double-exposed over another textured painting.

The piece is humorously titled "F---ing Orc", a nod to one of Morrell's early memories of the show that he couldn't shake off.

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"When we did the read through, it was this big read through for Amazon. They hired this Kiwi guy to read all the big print, all the directions."

"He was really great - he had this really grand kind of English, booming, Shakespearean voice. When we finally see the Orcs in the show, he's reading along, 'And she trembles... and she drops... and suddenly through the end, a f---ing Ork...'."

"And in that voice, it just stayed with me."

The piece itself fits with the goblin-like namesake - simply, it looks "kind of mean", Morrell said.

While the series landed the actor in New Zealand for almost a year straight, it was something that completely "came out of the blue" after a stint where television work was quiet.

"I was just sort of playing music and doing all the different art and everything, and then I did an audition for it, and, lo and behold, it took up a good year and a half of my life," he said.

The spectacle of creating a mega-budget show was "mind-blowing" with the sheer number of crew members, Morrell said, but in some ways, the process is no different to filming an episode of Murder Call.

"It's so enormous. Everyday you go from the set base camp, where you've got all make up, and all the trailers and all that stuff and that's enormous. Then you travelled to set, and you'll come up over the hill, and there's another car park there, and there's another set of probably 400 people at this site as well," he said.

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The elaborate sets and crew on Rings of Power were a far cry from the roots of Morrell's career, which lie firmly in Wollongong's TAFE theatre - a decidedly less glamorous stage, but one that gave Morrell a launching pad into Australia's arts world.

Fresh out of the University of Wollongong, the actor joined Theatre South - a professional theatre company that formed in the region in 1980.

The company was "of its time", Morrell said, in an era when regional theatre was funded by the Australia Council, providing a professional pathway for aspiring performers from the regions.

"I was with them for three years - we did sort of kids plays during the day, and then at night, we do all kinds of things - David Williamson and Dario Fo. The guy who ran the company was quite an academic - it was quite of its time."

"What it gave - I remember at the time, because I never trained [formally] - it gave people in the regions a pathway."

"I could work at a theatre company in Wollongong, which I did, and it was not fabulous money and it wasn't all year, but for me, it was my training. It just allows you the opportunity to immerse yourself in this thing, 24/7, just like studying."

While the actor has been around the world, working and travelling, he followed his roots back home to Wollongong six years ago, and doesn't plan on leaving anytime soon.

Morrell's Mount Keira abode is a labour of love - he's in the middle of installing a studio downstairs for his art, and his garden is a work in progress.

"I would never have thought about Mount Keira, but, that's the thing - you only go here if you live here or you're visiting someone, it's not on the way to anywhere, so it gives it a nice quality - I don't intend on leaving it, to be honest," he said.

The space lets him pursue his creative talents, and it's helpful that he's only a stone's throw away from his band-mate and fellow actor David Field, who inspired Morrell's move back to the area.

The pair are in a band called Thieves Oil - Morrell plays the banjo and a bit of clarinet - and are in the midst of making an album.

As Morrell's exhibition date draws closer, he said the nerves and second thoughts are always something that rear their head, but he doesn't let it get to him.

Unlike a play or a television show, where he reads words written by others, and collaborates with actors, writers and directors, the exhibition is all him, pouring straight from his imagination.

"You know, it never quite goes away, [the nerves]," he said.

"Even though I've done a lot of exhibitions over the years. I try not to worry too much."

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In the mean time, Morrell is content to focus on his creative trio - acting, art, and music - and adding the finishing touches to his downstairs studio.

Morrell's career is rare - he's among a small number of actors to make a career almost exclusively on the Australian screen, and reflecting on his life, Morrell said he's been extraordinarily lucky.

"It's a dream life in many ways - I didn't even know I was heading towards this kind of life, but I just couldn't have hoped for more,"

Morrell's exhibition, titled 'The body keeps the score' , will open at Clifton School of Arts on Saturday, February 4.

The exhibition will also be open February 5, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find the details here.

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