Page 34 - the NOISE November 2013

mulTi dimensional eTching
removing the darkness to get to the light
by sarah gianelli
Through color, content and style, Sally Murphy’s paintings naturally group themselves into three categories: earthy,
whimsical and mystical. Distinct as they are, all spring from a soulful connection to the multidimensional world she moves through, and it is from all levels — from the earth- bound to the incorporeal — that she finds the inspiration to fulfill her life’s purpose as a translator of experience, through the me- dium of paint.
“That’s what painting feels like to me,” says Ms. Murphy. “Like I’m translating my whole inner world: my relationship to a tree; my re- lationship to those rocks; my relationship to an experience or an idea.”
Her nature-oriented pieces — trees, rocks, nests, flowers — are composed in neutral earth tones and comprise her most realis- tic work. They allude to her background in environmental science and involve a more analytical process of observation. But even these pieces, as solidly grounded in physical reality as they are, bleed into the whimsical (a heart caught in tree branches like a kite; a snail pulling a house) and have metaphysical implications.
When Ms. Murphy studies a flower, she feels like she is sticking an antennae into her subject, extracting its particular vibrational energy, and then serves as a conduit for that energy to flow into her painting. Like roots, these pieces keep Ms. Murphy’s feet on the ground while she explores the far off galaxies of mind and spirit that beckon her constantly.
“I notice when I start painting more of the organic pieces, I’m feeling a little unground- ed,” she says. “I don’t realize it at the time; it’s always after the fact. It’s the same if I find my- self painting birds ... I realize later I’m want- ing more freedom in my life!”
Her mystical pieces are representations of actual spiritual experiences: waking to a room filled with blue orbs, feeling phantom hands on her body, finding sacred totems in nature after asking for them to appear.
These paintings come through in vibrantly hazy hues; pinks and blues, greens and pur- ples; and showcase Ms. Murphy’s innate eye for color. She remembers her amazement when she learned about the color wheel in elementary school.
“To me, it was magic. Pure magic,” she says. “‘I’m mixing two things together and getting something entirely different?! Any shade I want?!’ I couldn’t understand why everyone
wasn’t so blown away it became their life- long passion.”
Surprisingly, Ms. Murphy did not make painting her focus until moving to Jerome in 2006, when a physical setback forced her to brainstorm new ways of earning a living.
“I always wanted to live somewhere I could see the face of God everywhere I looked,” she says. “And that’s how I feel out here. And I found my people. They’re open and eccen- tric and creative; they’re looking like I’m look- ing, seeking like I’m seeking.”
Almost immediately after moving to Je- rome, she met New Mexico painter Lou Mae- stas at a Sedona arts festival and decided to apprentice with him in Taos. She learned how to build her own panels, mix glazes, and perhaps mostly importantly, how to paint without brushes, using only rags — a tech- nique she uses almost exclusively to this day. She also learned a process called retraction, best exhibited by her nest paintings (see this month’s cover), in which paint is applied and then removed to create the image.
“Isn’t it funny ... I’m removing the darkness to get to the light,” she says, demonstrat- ing with a cloth-cloaked fingernail how she forms the twigs that define her nest.
“When I look at bird nests I feel so awed by how they do it,” she says. “It’s unfathom- able to me. They have these little beaks and they’re building a house! Being able to cap- ture that process is amazing to me. I get re- ally quiet and meditative when I paint them because I feel like I’m the bird.”
Spirituality has always been the lens
through which Ms. Murphy views the world. As young as 10 years old, she remembers scouring the library in her small Iowa town for books on any esoteric subject — Bud- dhism, the pyramids, aliens, astrology.
“I was always more fascinated with what I couldn’t see than what I could see,” she says. “I think we all know on some level, that what
we see isn’t it.”
Ms. Murphy’s attempt to capture the mys-
terious realms of the ineffable is her way of making sense of her experiences, the mean- ing revealing itself slowly throughout the course of painting it, and even after it is com- pleted. Lately, she has been taken aback by the realization that what began as a depic- tion of something external, is really a picture of various aspects of herself.
While working on Multidimensional Me, she was processing a lot of information about multidimensional reality and explor- ing how to convey the concept on canvas. The canvas is thick with joint compound and paint, and designs that peek through the lay- ered depths.
“I think we’re living in many dimensions at once,” says Ms. Murphy. “Oftentimes, seeing into another dimension is just a matter of changing your perspective. All of a sudden you’re in an- other dimension of your own reality.”
Spirits In My Room depicts an actual spiri- tual experience in which Ms. Murphy awoke to — you got it — spirits in her room.
“I saw shimmering blobs of energy, cylin- drical in nature, somewhat jellyfish-like in their undulating transparency, but still illu- minated,” she says. “Somehow they remind- ed me of petroglyphs — faceless, but obvi- ously beings. Petroglyphs don’t always have heads and limbs; they’re not always clearly male or female. They’re very much like what I saw — presence. Simple, energetic presence.”
Oddly, her reaction was not “why are they here,” but how could she paint them?
Leaning against a wall in her bedroom is a work in progress that incorporates imagery
from many spiritually profound happen- ings in Ms. Murphy’s life. There is a saguaro whose form is akin to one of the spirits in her room; a rock with a spiral etched into it like one she found; animals that are simultane- ously a cat and an owl; a dolphin and a hawk.
“The message is still unclear,” she says. “It’s still coming in, but I’m realizing this painting is really me. This is the being that had the hands on me. These are the three feathers I manifested — a reminder that all I have to do is ask and it comes. It started me think- ing that every one of the beings in my room were representations of me too. Some days this one feels like me,” she says, pointing to a blue figure in the corner of the canvas. This other one is the galactic me. This is my Native American aspect. This is my masculine. This is my spirit animal. The rock is the mystery. The feathers are the magic.
“My art is always a picture of where I’m at spiritually,” she adds. “It’s not so much a mes- sage as it is a sharing. I like to share experi- ences that let us all know that there are mi- raculous things that happen that we’re not always paying attention to ... but I’m paying attention.”
Ms. Murphy is also in the process of pub- lishing “a tiny little book about a tiny little town” (a self-illustrated story/coloring book about Jerome), and making clocks out of her nest paintings, both of which will be avail- able in local shops and galleries.
This month, her art can be found in Pas- sion Cellars Winery; The Epiphyte Gallery; and Magdalena’s Bazaar, all in Jerome. Ms. Murphy will also be amongst the featured artists in the Made in Clarkdale exhibit in December. The artist herself can be found weekdays at Jerome’s Pura Vida Gallery, where she has been a cherished employee for nearly four years.
| Sarah Gianelli can now say with relative certainty she knows her whites from her reds. sarahgianelli@hotmail.com
34 • november 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us