Artist Talk with Suzy Murphy

Suzy Murphy is a UK-based printmaker specialising in monotypes with work in many important public and private collections. She paints her work directly onto aluminium plates which she then prints onto paper. Her work is deeply autobiographical, and her paintings are best understood as a form of self-portraiture. Vast, deserted, majestic landscape with only the smallest hint of a human presence – the headlights of car or an isolated cabin – are recurrent themes in Suzy’s work. Her images are not just visual representations of observed landscapes, they are also imbued with a profoundly personal dialogue and underlying political commentary.

Suzy was born in London’s East End in 1964, then moved to Canada at the age of five. The shift from a small tenement apartment, where she lived with her large Irish family, to the vast open landscapes of North America, brought an enormous emotional shift. This experience became the creative catalyst that informs the tranquillity and magical realism of her work.

Suzy Murphy’s love of North America remains, and she continues to travel extensively on road trips from the monumental landscapes of the Rocky Mountains to the sprawling townships and prairies. Her diarised sketches record her trips and these small, spontaneous images become the basis for her paintings.

On the night, Suzy will be joined by her representing gallery, Lyndsey Ingram, giving us the opportunity to ask questions about commercial aspects of printmaking and the artist-gallery interrelationship.