Painting means a deep form of meditation to me. It is, so to speak, a vacation from the self and its noise.
Art allows me to express my unconscious, emotions, ideas, and dreams in the form of light, color, and structures. Especially the craftsmanship of mixing colors, selecting the painting knife, roller, or brush, requires a special form of concentration. The greatest compliment I have received so far was from another artist who said to me: "You can see your own handwriting in your painting." That is exactly what drives me to paint.
The artist Annette Murphy, born in Tokyo on April 27, 1963, grew up bilingual in Rome. She studied history, art history, and languages. She worked as a translator and teacher, speaks five languages, and was a handball and hockey goalkeeper. Her childhood and youth were spent in Rome, where she came into close contact with churches, fountains, forums, statues, frescoes, painting, and sculpture from antiquity, the Renaissance, and Baroque on her daily walks through the Eternal City, which had a profound influence on her.
The path to her current artistic expression was gradual. Painting accompanied each of her life stages. As a child, she painted caricatures of teachers and students during lessons. As a young woman, she painted landscapes in watercolor and took lessons with a Tuscan teacher. Later, she created still lifes in oil and took further painting courses with artists.
The catalyst for her current art, which is predominantly abstract, came from visiting the exhibition "Monet's Garden." After experiencing that sea of light and color, she began painting with an intensity she had never known before, dedicating herself to daily work.
The great role models who have shaped her are Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, Chagall, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Gerhard Richter. Annette Murphy’s works are diverse. She portrays snowy mountain and sea landscapes, city and people portraits, still lifes with flowers, fruit, pitchers, etc., impressionistic dot paintings in a burst of flowers, as well as entirely abstract works.
Her paintings increasingly break away from the figurative and transition into abstraction. She enjoys experimenting with vibrant acrylic paints, which she applies in multiple layers to create interesting structures. In this process, she not only uses brushes and palette knives but also unconventional tools.
For the realization of her abstract paintings, she found the perfect medium in acrylic paint. What makes her paintings special is the distinctive technique and expressiveness. Color, structure, and drawing are the three main ingredients. You will never find a painting of hers that consists of only one layer of paint. The minimum is two to three layers, and the maximum can reach up to six. As a result, her paintings glow in a unique way, and the viewer senses the different layers and structures beneath the surface.
Annette Murphy's fascination with light and the subtle interplay of colors runs like a red thread through her paintings. In every brushstroke, in every dab of color, she conveys the emotional depth and magical attraction of light in all its facets. Her paintings can be viewed for a long time because they feel like a positive meditation due to their harmonious color combinations and strong positive emotional energy.
The message of her paintings is an emotional declaration of love for the beauty in life.
