26 paintings by J. E. Murphy

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33869, 14 June 1975, Page 7

26 paintings by J. E. Murphy

Showing at the C.S.A. ! Gallery are 26 recent paintings by J, E. Murphy, ’ almost all exploiting landscape forms, a genre now i inevitable, it would seem, in New Zealand painting. Murphy’s work makes no claim to an elevated artistic ; status, content as it is to remain within the confines of a sophisticated semiabstracted decoration, and as i such it succeeds well enough. Superficially, he is con- ■ cerned with the landscape, <and hills in particular, but Prather than seek to attain a (better understanding of the i nature of his motif, or to | make some hitherto illusive ■aspect of it obvious to the viewer, Murphy uses it as a (vehicle upon which he may exercise his own particular kind of pattern making. Entire surfaces and forms

<are subsumed in the over-all! i patterning of transparently! (painted areas, arabesques of I [textured ground, and sue-! icessive layers of rich colour.! The tendency to pattern! I making, often approaching; J the proportions of a genuine! .i horror vacuii, manifests itself! (lin curvilinear foliate forms! fl inscribed into the ground! !! with the butt end of a brush, ; (and in swirling patterns of [sweeping parallel lines, the .[result of paint spread with a (toothed squeegee. '[ Into and on to this texture Jhe lays successive glazes of .Transparent acrylic paint, , (achieving along the way .[some appealing areas of .[colour and paint. The end !!is, however, the texture and! . i surface, and the motif is .[nothing more than a vehicle’ [for this display of technical! J and decorative virtuosity. Indeed, the texture is! (seldom the outcome of the'; I painting of a form, sweeping j [ undisturbed across the [ ' picture surface with the; i forms arbitrarily super-: : imposed upon it. This is par- ( Iticularly obvious with the! (unchecked sweep of painted! and textured land forms into [ •the sky, derived as it is from! a glyptic reduction by over-: [painting with opaque white! paint. Perhaps Murphy's early ■ (training as a sculptor is re-! ! sponsible for this tendency I Ito attain forms through! ■whittling away, and hisj (denial of the painterly pro-! icess where the mark of the! ; brush is not the product of ! i the need to describe form. The exhibition will remain (open until June 18. —T.L.R.W. |