Courtney
Murphy 
Painting
Courtney
earned her BA in Studio Art from the University of California Davis. She
received her MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School
of Figurative Art where she studied anatomy, contemporary painting and the
techniques of the classical masters. She has attended the Pont Aven School of
Contemporary Art in Brittany, France, The Art Center in Pasadena, as well as
having spent four years at the California Art Institute where she studied with
figurative artist, Jeremy Lipking. She now lives and works in Northern
Virginia and is a resident artist at Art Square in Leesburg as well as a
professor of foundations at the Art Institute of Washington.
Murphy’s work examines the bare bones of narrative painting, leading the viewer with body language and hints at possibilities, through the glimpsed moment in time, yet allowing the viewer to complete each story. Society is built upon the idea of instant gratification. People have become de-sensitized to drama, beauty and the element of mystery. When the pictorial space is stripped of presence of the human face, an alluring ambiguity arises. The subjects of her work are expressive characters, who evoke sensations from strength to vulnerability.
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