November 18 - January 16, 1999
Greg Murr: Paintings (Alumni Exhibition)
Visiting Artist lecture: time and date to be announced
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 18, 4 - 6 pm
"Making paintings is about the exhilaration of being creator. It is about bringing something to life through careful guidance and then loosening the reins enough to feel that I have lost control and set into motion a thing of unimaginable weight and force.
I am drawn to the sensuality of certain forms taken from our everyday world. Each painting becomes a kind of puzzle that, instead of begging a solution, offers a sensory experience undermining my desire or need to resolve.
The forms that I paint are objects and diagrams to record the sensual nature of the surrounding world. Their allusions to botany, microbiology or to the human figure refer to living growth and change. It is important that I understand them to be in a state of metamorphosis. Edges breathe, generating an energy that endures my scrutiny. The forms are visceral; they confront me with both the elegance and the banality of their being. They are complex devices of attraction and repulsion. I accept them for their sheer materiality, a rich sequence of paint, stains and pencil trails.
Lines that compose the forms are brands, scars and shadows, each in some way a heavy, blackened trace of something else--an action or an object--a thing that used to be present and may still be. Darkness evokes ambiguity and apprehension, force and weight. Its intoxication seduces me and in the same breath admonishes, threatening with a sensation of doubt. Their darkness is paradoxic: beautiful and strong but uncomfortable and malleable. It is both dormant and active, hovering in anticipation, provocative."
---Greg Murr
| Greg Murr Couple, 1997 charcoal, pastel and graphite on paper 8" x 10" |
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