Artist Martin Murphy
Congratulations to Martin Murphy who placed as a finalist in the 5th Edition!
Who are you?
My name is Martin Murphy and I’m a painter working out of Vancouver, Canada.
I’ve had a lot of passions in my life and all of them seem to revolve around the arts. While I was studying Illustration in art college I was also training as a dancer on the side. I ended up landing a job performing for a summer in Nice, France so I left art college and my side hobby as a dancer morphed into a 15-year career as a performer in Canada and a few cities in the USA. I was still keeping up with my art over those years with portrait commissions, theatre posters, and learning the computer so when it was time to put the dancing shoes away; it wasn’t too much of an adjustment to begin focusing on art full-time. I worked as a freelance artist for a few years then got a job at Lucas Film’s Industrial Light and Magic in California working in visual effects for the film. It was life-changing. My days were focused on form, texture, light, how skin reacts to different kinds of light, anatomy, scales, fur, massive environments, you name it. For over 16 years I worked as a digital creature modeller and texture artist then eventually a Supervisor. Now, as a full-time painter, I try to incorporate what I’ve learned over the years into my painting. I paint in my little condo downtown painting figures, still-life, and I love painting koi.
“Koi #4” [Winning work]
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
What Inspired you to begin utilizing oil paint as a medium?
Years ago (late 1980’s I think), my old roommate came home with this enormous book on John Singer Sargent. On the cover was his portrait of Lady Agnew looking directly at the viewer with these large confident brushstrokes of blue and violet. I was instantly obsessed. I was mesmerized by how Sargent could convey so much information with such few marks on the canvas. His portraits weren’t stiff likenesses, his figures often leaned in and out of the shadow and I loved how the hands were always part of the story. That week I put together my first large canvas, picked up some oil paints and a “How to Paint in Oils” book and painted my first Sargent inspired painting for my living room.
“Holly”
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind your winning work “Koi #4”?
Growing up as a kid I always had an aquarium, sometimes more than one (there was a brief time in my young life I wanted to be a Marine Biologist). I had this one tank that was so large I could climb into it to clean it. It was initially a marine aquarium but over the years ended up being home to a few large koi. They were like pets who would follow you around the room and loved to be hand-fed. I loved the look of them as they swam around the tank and I loved how no two koi are the same. The aquarium is long gone but my fascination with koi remains. When I was living in California I discovered a koi distributor not too far away. I showed up there with my camera and asked if I could take some reference pictures for a painting. They surprisingly said yes and even turned off the bubblers so I could easily photograph the fish in these massive pools. I shot for a couple of hours and gathered enough reference photos for many paintings. I try and keep as faithful to their colour patterns as possible and I enjoy the challenge of conveying the movement and refraction in the water.
“Proud Father”
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
Your work clearly and beautifully spans subjects from figure to still-life to animals. Is there one that you strongly connect to? Why or why not?
I understand it can be confusing when an artist bounces between different subject matter. Galleries don’t know how to brand you and it’s difficult for anyone to fit the artist into a genre. That statement is true but it has also been my path in life since an early age to do what you love and see where it takes you. Sometimes I fall short, sometimes I succeed. I’ve spent years performing in front of 2000 people a night in productions like Cats and Phantom of the Opera and have created creatures for films such as Jurassic World and Pirates of the Caribbean. I’ve learned to embrace being a different kind of artist. It’s not easy and I understand my path can be confusing but hopefully now I can find a way to bring it all together and put it on canvas. Perhaps not this painting but maybe the next or even the next.
“Male Figure Reclining”
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
What do you hope to communicate with your art?
I’m working on telling a better story. Although I have days where I feel confident about the technical aspect of my work I am constantly looking to tell a deeper story. Perhaps it can be the use of lighting, the pose of a subject, the textures, something that will move or inspire the viewer to better enjoy and relate to my work. I feel that’s the most challenging part of putting a piece together.
“Nine Thirty Two”
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
Do you have a particular piece that you view as your most accomplished? Why?
That’s a good question. What I feel is my best work continually changes and I grow as an artist but there is one digital illustration I did back in the late ’90s that I feel could be that piece. I did a lot of promotional digital illustration for an art software company out of California and they hired me to create an image showcasing their new distorting liquid-type brush. I had two dancers in a pose, one on top of the other, and the liquid brush was used to pull and distort the bodies to create their costumes and hair. It was fairly simple but it’s still one of my favourites as got the chance to incorporate dancers and digital art to create a piece.
“Koi #6”
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
Have you experimented with other mediums? If so, which ones and how?
Digital art and oil painting have been my main tools for quite a while now. I haven’t taken the opportunity to experiment in a long time but every trip to the art supply store is a constant reminder there are so many potentially fun things to try.
“Dancers”
By Martin Murphy
Digital Illustration
Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your works?
I think my answer to this question relates to a previous question about what do you hope to communicate with your art. I have a few large paintings sitting in my closet that I have spent many (many) weeks on but may never see the light of day because they didn't convey any emotion or story. They were soulless laboured duds. I wanted to paint something, and I did but neglected to really dig deep and develop a personal connection and a story behind all the brush strokes. That emotional connection, that story, is more important than fussing over realistic details and that’s what I’ll be pushing in my future pieces.
Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?
I think my artistic career has been a compilation of many smaller successes giving me the opportunity to create every day. But if I had to think of one big success it would be getting the job at Industrial Light and Magic in 2002. There I was able to really sink my teeth into the extremely complex aspects of computer visual art and then take what I learned there and apply it to traditional art. I can now spot the subsurface scattering of light around the eyelids of a Rembrandt self-portrait or around the nostrils of a Sargent portrait or even the fleshy lips of a koi fish.
“Koi #5”
By Martin Murphy
Oil on Canvas
What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?
Since I’m early into my painting career, I’m always applying for an art show here or a contest there trying to get my work out into the world. What I’m really focused on is the Art Vancouver International Art Fair happening May 5-8, 2022 here in Vancouver, Canada. I’ll have a booth there and will be able to show my best work and hopefully get some valuable feedback or gallery representation. I’m still deciding on whether it will be all koi, or all figures, or a mix.
Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?
Work hard and take risks. I am all for taking risks and following your passions. It sounds incredibly cliché (and it is) but if you do a little planning ahead and do your homework taking risks wouldn’t be such a scary thing. But on a more practical note, I have two pieces of advice I usually give out: stop saying ‘good enough’ and what my father told me when I nervously revealed to him I was leaving art college to perform in France, “Do it while you’re young.”
To view more of Martin Murphy’s work