About Ian Murphy
Ian Murphy (born 9th March 1963) is a contemporary British Fine Artist who gained initial success with selection to the British Young Contemporary Artists in 1985. He is best known for his powerful, tonal drawings and atmospheric, mixed media oil paintings of architectural places.
Education
His secondary education was at Cardinal Newman RC High School (No longer in existence), but his major push to an artistic career came through a strong Fine Art based A level programme and a Foundation course in his home town of Wigan. From here he moved on to complete a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art, Painting and Printmaking, graduating in 1985 with 1st class honours from Sheffield (now Hallam University).
Born: 1963, Wigan, UK
Educated: Wigan, Sheffield, UK
Graduated: 1985, 1st Class Honours degree B.A. Fine Art, Painting & Printmaking
Exhibitions & Sales: London, Manchester, Leeds, Oxford, Sheffield, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, China, USA
Educational Films: BBC, British Council, NSEAD, WWF for nature
Early Works
Ian Murphy’s early works focused on heavily toned, dramatically lit, industrial compositions. These pieces encapsulated his fascination with the rugged, earthy surroundings that were very much a predominant feature of both his home environment and university years in Northern England.
The layered surfaces of his large scale drawings and paintings bore all the marks and textures that were very much reminiscent of the scarified and etched walls and doorways of the factories, coal mines, canal locks and railway goods yards he explored for his research. His thick layers of experimental impasto media enticed you to touch, not only satisfying the urge to understand how good indentations feel on your fingers but also to go some way to embrace the metaphorical context of hard life of the people who worked in those environments.
The most successful ideas during this period, however, came when he sought out sparse, claustrophobic viewpoints in abandoned buildings to become the focal point of his sketchbook drawings. It was the visual intrigue that he captured in these derelict abodes that drew so much attention from his newly formed fan base – he commented back in the ’80s of his surprise that so many people seemed to have a similar fascination with minimally lit interior passageways in forgotten places. He thought the exploration of these forlorn habitats was far too self-indulgent, and the body of works would represent an important period of his life but little did he realise that it was a subject also fascinated the masses, both for the initial interest during his degree exhibition, and then in the subsequent exhibitions in the following years.
Tracing the Development
Ian Murphy always talks about the importance of his formative years, the period of time through school and college that cemented his resolve for drawing directly on location.
“Working outside of my home or school, just became a habit for me, I really enjoyed walking to new places and winning the technical challenge when I drew places in my sketchbooks. This is definitely the time I got a solid understanding of perspective and creating the illusion of depth. When I look back at my career, I realise the importance of the time and effort I dedicated to my drawing at school. It really set me up for the challenges ahead.”
His professional career started in 1985 and securing his first role as a resident Artist in the Turnpike Gallery was an important stepping stone, not only into his role as a communicator but also to the reality of producing artwork, exhibiting and selling out of the educational arena. He quickly gained notoriety for his ability to introduce his working practices to a wider audience but more importantly, the first few years out of university enabled him to expand his search for drawing ideas and begin his passion for travelling internationally.
The Working Strategy - Travelling to discover
His professional career started in 1985 and securing his first role as a resident Artist in the Turnpike Gallery was an important stepping stone, not only into his role as a communicator but also to the reality of producing artwork, exhibiting and selling out of the educational arena. He quickly gained notoriety for his ability to introduce his working practices to a wider audience but more importantly, the first few years out of university enabled him to expand his search for drawing ideas and begin his passion for travelling internationally.
Fundamentally Ian Murphy’s Drawings and Paintings are about connecting people and places. He entices you to explore the visual content in his atmospheric paintings of forgotten and decaying places, and then he engages you with the tactile surface layers of colour, brush-mark and text to explore the creative process and discover the underlying narrative within each piece. Famous historic sites through to innocuous street corners; palaces, temples or even bedraggled shanty towns are all sources of inspirational content for Ian Murphy, and the intrigue of every visual journey he undertakes, captured in his powerful sketchbook recordings are very much the blueprint for the atmospheric and often semi-abstract canvases.
The Sensory Journey
Erosion, Antiquity and the Beauty of Imperfections
Ian Murphy seeks out the places that exude the qualities of neglect and abandonment – the intrinsic details of erosion, decay and antiquity are the very components that form the visual aesthetic that makes his work so compelling. He sees the ‘beauty in imperfections’ and these marks of life are the important catalyst to the experimental media layers on the canvas surface. He often says that the layers of his paintings not only embody the history of the site but also symbolise the importance of how people exist within their communities.
Aesthetics and the Quality of Light
We often appreciate the visual presence of something on face value but the important element of Ian Murphy’s work is to not only visually enthral you but to also invite the audience into a journey of discovery. He deliberately creates subtle nuances of light and mood to entice you in to discover a bit more than you first thought. The construction of his large scale pieces are intrinsically linked to the essence of Romanticism in Art where content and narrative merge, he uses the exploration of mixed media layers to create amazing surface textures that drag you in close to see how they exist on the canvas. Once you have scrutinised the nuances of paint and mixed media at close quarters the next instinct of your aesthetic exploration is to step back and embrace the entire content again looking to the boundaries of the image – this is when the melancholic feelings start to wrap around you – you are then observing the amazing qualities of atmosphere and mood, the ethereal qualities of the light, the mist, the heat, all the intangibles that evoke the feelings of presence.
Many viewers of Ian Murphy’s work often talk about wanting to ‘walk in’ to the painting, trying to follow an enticing journey through to the inner courtyard or through a partially obscured passageway. This visual connect is usually associated with the presence of a hidden light source, an important ingredient which gently manipulates the audience into engaging, not only with his personal exploration of places far away, but the unique traits of the image itself.
‘Hutong’ series 2020
The ‘Hutong’ series, in particular, encapsulates this quality perfectly. In many of the compositions Ian Murphy presents you with the strong presence of the exterior facades of the Chinese village homes. The walls physically occupy the greater proportion of the canvas surface, they seamlessly appear out of the tactile surface textures, but significantly they are always depicted from an angle that prevents you from seeing too much of the interior space. This almost tantalising approach to the viewing angle, in one sense, immediately symbolises the protective nature of the exterior facade but, more importantly, it creates intrigue and speculation; what is there to see through the passageway? What will I discover if I walk a bit further?
The connection between colour and tone
The subjective qualities of atmosphere and mood are essentially controlled by the calculated use of his strictly neutral palette. Ian Murphy very often limits the range and vibrancy of his oil colours in order to capture a dramatic quality of shadow in a secluded void or hidden corner of the composition. This technique, again a key component in historical Romanticist painting, starts to create a subdued emotive response. Not only does the abundance of neutral pigments prevent your eye from wandering away from the light source, but the prominence of the earthen tones on the periphery of the composition actually allows you to focus your attention on the dash of rich colour intrinsically placed on an entrance he wants you to explore further.