Deirdre Murphy’s latest body of work is knit together by the concept of a threshold, which can be defined as the start of something new or can signal the point at which a certain effect is produced. These paintings do both.

In the Oculus series, we are transported into galaxies dusted with constellations of stars and inhabited by suspended planetary orbs. Deep space is interrupted by horizontal strips of marbleized gray patterns, suggesting aerial maps of painterly landscapes witnessed from above. At times, as in Blue Oculus, Chinese Landscape, these bands not only intersect but merge with their adjacent planets whose edges fade and dissolve. A closer look reveals this planetary surface is not covered by the earth’s familiar continental contours, but by an ancient Chinese landscape. A giant green Luna moth hovers along the planetary rim, distorting the viewer’s sense of scale and reminding us this is not the world we thought we knew. Murphy’s layering of familiar forms made strange resonates with John Yau’s provocation of “the radical possibility of seeing what is in front of you.” Sometimes seeing is easiest when reality shifts just enough to invite the viewer in for a closer look as these Oculus paintings do, inviting us in to observe our surroundings. They serve as thresholds insofar as they take us somewhere new, while also challenging us to heighten our perception, to really notice and pay attention to what we see.

While roughly half the works in the show bear witness to this macroscopic universe, the rest are firmly rooted in the earth and Murphy’s longstanding commitment to plein-air painting. This is plein-air painting with a difference, though: rather than reflecting the artist’s immersion in an open-air environment, they picture nature through a portal, either in the format of a lens or storm culvert. By inserting an artificial structure between the viewer and nature, they challenge a metaphor in place since the Renaissance in which painting is conceived as an unmediated window onto the world. Murphy instead frames nature, making us aware of the act of looking and the devices through which we see. This is entirely appropriate for paintings created during a pandemic in which even access to nature is conditioned by socially-distanced protocols. They speak to a reality in which movement across a seemingly simple threshold can feel perpetually beyond reach.

Despite these limitations, the pandemic has allowed for certain insights. The Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy notes that historically pandemics have forced a break with the past to reimagine how we live. They usher us into another world, inviting us to look with fresh eyes at what is before us and to reconsider our place within the larger universe. View Site

This is also what Murphy does: using terrestrial and planetary portals, she opens up rich and vibrant worlds. Despite differences in appearance, these works are linked through the repeated motif of the circle, which suggests the cyclical nature of life with its ceaseless change and unending process of growth.