Wil Murray Artist Statements

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Fall, 2008

I pour and paint directly on the painting, and off of it, on glass, to be peeled up once dry. Sometimes I apply the skins flat, as collage. Sometimes I am a sausage maker or Montgolfier, sealing the edges and filling the insides with foam. Other times again, I compose off the support and apply the results as fabric, fitted, folded and pinned in place.

I cut back in. Remove sections. I collage my own marks. Re-apply them, sagging or proud.

I paint from old drawings, aging photos, and my own paintings, mixing plastic space with very real form.

These actions all confuse. They all order.

This year I’ve found the viewer’s radial dance in front of my work exciting. With a few nods to sculpture, interior spaces, paint skin excretions, and re-attached drawings stretch the movements required to view every bit of a painting from a dance to acrobatics.

This year I’ve found the photographic representation of my work fascinating. For many, who will never see them, the actual paintings do not exist except as mock-ups for the photographic representations they can easily access. The photographs are the de facto original that the object will be compared to, unless seen in person and preferred.

This year I’ve thought "That’ll photograph well" while painting and then gone blind.

If the inevitable photographic representation of a painting offers secured flatness, I am afforded the space in the studio to discard or include it and to move from it outward. What flatness can ask of the eyes, form can ask of the whole body. I wish for each, so I paint with both.

My work pools at the nexus of the ensured trite pop of referential photography, and the minute rigor of building, manufacturing and experimentation. Each painting is made to be an extravagant dandy for its flattening flashbulb headshot and a faulty trap, inviting for the warm fleshy viewer to look and dance in front of and leave, while it sits, forever an engaging wallflower and only ever really a painting in memory and snapshot.

-Wil Murray

For further reading on the subjects oin this statement, please consult my blog.