About the work

The forms that inhabit David Murphy’s works often develop out of accumulations – discrete actions that embrace unpredictability within repetitive processes. With the recent Blanket (Veiled) works (2022-) Murphy prepares Gesso Panels to a recipe devised by Florentine artist Cennino Cennini in the 15th century. This technique combines traditional French chalk and rabbit skin glue on a wooden panel, and would have originally been a surface for gilded icon paintings. To this surface, resembling polished plaster, Murphy applies layer upon layer of casein paint in finely meshed lines, creating a dense, textile-like surface. Once dry, and again polished, a sequence of more or less regular lines are incised with an etching needle into the surface, excavating a secondary image from the chalk that teeters on the brink of three-dimensions.

Date and country of birth

1983, GB

Career Highlights

Recent exhibitions:

Paintings, Paterson Zevi, London, UK (2023);
Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, Fulmer, UK (2023);
Lines of Empathy, Patrick Heide, London, UK (and touring) (2023);
Great Small Works, Stephane Simoens, Knokke-Zoute, Belgium (2022);
In Landscape Mode, Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India (2022);
David Murphy & Alison Hall, Stephane Simoens, Knokke-Zoute, Belgium;
New Tints, Bartha Contemporary, London, UK (2020);
Day Starts with morning, Harlow Arts Trust (2020);
Long Ending for Oxford House, Oxford Street, London, UK (2020);
DRIFT, Alma Zevi, Venice, Italy (2019);
Tactile Line, New Art Centre, Salisbury, UK (2019);
The Blanket Yorkshire Sculpture Park & Halifax Piece Hall (2019).