James Austin Murray’s paintings are made using the most basic of means: ivory black oil paint, a canvas with wood-panel support and wallpaper brushes—up to nine affixed to a long handle. But the paintings surface effects are far from simple, and indeed offer an almost otherworldly experience, as the architecture of the brushstrokes take the eye on a roller-coaster journey into pleats and folds, over light-struck hillocks and into shadowy crooks and bends. Depending on where you stand, the paintings appear like a landscape one could walk right into. It is a visual encounter that is both inviting and profoundly seductive.
James Austin Murray is a graduate of Parsons School of Design, New York, NY (1992). Murray opened and managed the Hartnett-Murray Gallery and The Markham-Murray Gallery in Tribeca, New York in the early eighties. His works has been exhibited throughout the US and abroad. He is a recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship Award for residency at The Vermont Studio Center, VT and has completed residencies at The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, NY and Bermis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. Murray’s work is found in numerous private and public collections such Weisman Collection (Los Angeles, CA), Sofitel (Philadelphia, PA), Hotel Palomar (Philadelphia, PA), Four Seasons Hotel (Washington, D.C.), Omni Hotel (Nashville, TN) and Tom Ford (Designer). Murray’s studio is in Piermont, NY outside of New York City.
