Dark Swell

Ivan Murphy

Ivan Murphy’s landscape paintings are based on memories of particular sites, with basic structures and meanings revealed through repetition. Murphy does not seek out specific sites, but paints based on the familiar, including urban sites from walks to work, winter fields (“Seignieuries”) on road trips home to Québec, winter clearcuts, or seascapes at night and day, witnessed as a pilot boat deckhand. Paintings are created as editions or series, repeating and retranslating until essential form, content, and colour is revealed. Though referencing observed reality, the work emphasizes the material/plastic possibilities of paint and process.

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