Catherine Murphy’s intimate realism

Contributed by Peter Schroth / At Peter Freeman, Inc., esteemed realist Catherine Murphy resurfaces with a new selection of her novel perceptions of the quotidian. In Cathy and Harry, a new documentary about the life, work, and marriage of Murphy and her husband Harry Roseman, also an artist, Murphy says that one of her prime objectives is to express “universal objectivity.” Against some strands of painting tradition, she chooses subjects so mundane as to be otherwise unremarkable, indicating a gentle contrariness.

Murphy comes from a generation of realist artists who were challenged to carve a path between abstraction, on the one hand, and Pop and Minimalism, on the other. Taking the position that “all painting is abstract,” she injects detached, formal reserve into her work. Along those lines, kindred spirits include Rackstraw Downes, Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, and Neil Welliver. Fairfield Porter was interested in the same milieu but amplified the charm of the home and the comfort of the everyday whereas Murphy downplays or even negates these qualities. The familiar often appears alien, like the obscurely off-putting utility light in Studio Spot that seems to have crawled out from some dark place and into the picture.

On general themes Murphy offers a range of variants and sub-series, continually refreshing her overall vision. Drapery appears frequently, often patterned, at times with abrupt juxtapositions of florals with stripes. An icon-like series of drawings of female heads enfolded in scarves both contrasts and reconciles the patterns and folds of the fabric with the texture, stream and swirl of the hair. A human presence, sometimes overt and sometimes implied, is usually palpable. Identities, though, are often hidden or merely hinted: scarves shroud women viewed from behind, footprints appear in snow, and impressions are left in bedsheets.

Murphy displays more than a touch of humor in title puns and wordplay (Aside, Under the Table) and in whimsical divisions of space and object, the latter painting featuring a shoe’s eye view of knees and napkins. Needs Must employs a window frame that doubles as a picture frame, nodding obliquely to Vermeer as the drape falls aside only to reveal another drape and deny the viewer visual access to whatever lies on the other side of the window.

The palette swings from relatively neutral, warm/cool, and somewhat Dutch-leaning (Needs Must, Harry’s Office, Double Bed) to a contrapuntal riot of color. In the documentary, the artist exclaims, “Color confuses me!” Maybe to steamroll the confusion, she takes a bold and graphically assertive approach, prominent in works like Under the Table and Bed Clothes, in which she pins the issue down, apparently drawing inspiration from the trusty 5-crayon box of jumbo Crayolas we had as children. In opposition to more tonally-focused works, the saturated hues here are all about the definitiveness of their color – their aggressive redness, greenness, or what have you.

In contrast to the emotional restraint demonstrated in most of the works, a power-punch painting – a close-up of a gnarly tree, bark and sinew exposed by a screaming gash in its trunk – confronts viewers as they enter the show. It is perhaps just a slightly adverse example of Murphy’s penchant for exploring pattern and texture, thus akin to the scarf-and-air drawings and ultimately more celebratory than grim. At the other end of the exhibit is Double Bed, a tender work that is ever so subtly charged. A diptych, it conveys a state of being “alone together.” The color here is not in the least confused, possessing a predominant, golden cast accompanied by discreet undertones. With impressions of the occupants pressed into the linens, Murphy co-locates presence and absence. One could safely assume that Cathy and Harry are downstairs in the kitchen having breakfast.

Murphy is engaged in an ongoing visual study of similarity and variation that proceeds by looping back on itself. It is indeed a perception of the universal, yet a very intimate one.

“Catherine Murphy: Recent Work,” Peter Freeman, Inc., 140 Grand Street, New York, NY. Through April 19, 2025.

About the author: Peter Schroth is a Brooklyn based painter.