A renowned painter from Johnson City who focuses on personal feminism and uses figuration and abstraction as her primary forms of expression will exhibit her cutting-edge work for a month at Tusculum University.
Katie Murphy will present “The Great Southern Box Show” from Friday, Sept. 27-Friday, Oct. 25, in the Clem Allison Gallery, located inside Annie Hogan Byrd Fine Arts Center. Tusculum’s Center for the Arts will host a reception for her from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, which also falls during the university’s Homecoming celebration. The public is invited to attend the exhibit and the reception, both of which are free. Monetary donations are welcome.
Murphy and Benjamin Conley, assistant professor of art and design at Tusculum, connected through the Johnson City arts scene and have participated in a couple of shows together. Like Conley, she is an arts educator. Assessing her work, Conley is impressed with the talent she brings to the table.
“The way that Katie handles material, paint and the surface is unlike a lot of work I have seen before, at least in this region,” said Conley, who also serves as the gallery’s director. “It feels very experimental, almost avant garde even. She possesses a lot of rendering skill that makes her paintings realistic and naturalistic, but she is also strong with abstract forms and color. She is a fantastic fit for our gallery because bringing local and regional artists whose work is skillful and contemporary is important.”
“The Great Southern Box Show” examines Murphy’s familial and cultural heritage. She paints on corrugated boxes, a product her father and grandfather have sold during their careers. She has assembled these boxes since her childhood.
“In working with these objects, I access my lived experience and continue my considerations around containers and containment,” she said. “The paintings become evidence and a record of my interior experience as well as marks of time from my embodied practice. I choose certain formal constraints for myself, such as working on waxed cardboard or working within a color family and then open my practice to see what can happen. For me, it is a time-based practice, but the art object itself exists as evidence of that time.”
Murphy describes her artistic practice as living in a world informed by figuration and abstraction. She said meaningful relationships in her personal life inspire her artistry.
“Using multiple or collaged reference images that I print from my collection of digital photos, I begin with a form, pattern, landscape or figure,” Murphy said. “Through the process of painting, I engage in a practice of removal, repetition and transformation of my initial references and ideas. I am interested in this path of openness and possibility, releasing the demand of a destination and engaging in the joy and excitement of a painterly dérive.
“My work holds the tension of visibility and interiority, domestic restraints and freedom found in nature, and resistance towards a readable image. Beginning with memory and relationships, I allow those subjective sources to inform my paint handling as I continue to build, create and revisit my embodied memory of painting. Paintings can sing for you in the silence and fill in the space between. I am interested in exploring and creating this beautiful shared experience.”
Murphy’s appearance at the Clem Allison Art Gallery will mark the beginning of shows during the 2024-25 academic year. It will also help kick-start a busy year for Tusculum’s Center for the Arts, which will include a variety of art, music, theater and literary productions.
Rouja Green, director of the Center for the Arts, is thrilled Murphy will lead off this year’s schedule.
“We are delighted to host this great contemporary artist and share her excellent work with the community and the Tusculum family,” Green said. “Katie will continue a lengthy tradition at Tusculum of presenting high-caliber arts programming and reinforce our contribution to the community’s quality of life. People will thoroughly enjoy this show, and we strongly encourage everyone to meet Katie and learn more about what the Center for the Arts offers to the community.”
People can view the exhibit from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday during its monthlong showing. The gallery is adjacent to the lobby on the first floor of Annie Hogan Byrd.
Anyone with questions about this exhibit can email Conley at [email protected].
Further information about the Center for the Arts.
More details about the university can be accessed at www.tusculum.edu.
