June 28th, 2017

By Veronica Vale, Fine Art Consultant

With resplendently textured paint layers, Pamela Murphy and Sarah Winkler give the surface of their work its own individualized history, all the while giving elegant insight into a time in our collective past. Please join Gallery MAR in welcoming both artists for an artist reception on Friday, June 30th at 6pm. Both artists will be in attendance. Their paintings carry with them a feeling of quiet significance, as if each work holds within its layers a treasured account of the history of the world.

Pamela Murphy collects and chooses figures from old photographs for her paintings. The people whose lives are recorded in those pictures are strangers, yet they are familiar in a nostalgic way and remind us of ourselves and our families. Many layers of paint reveal the history of the canvas and create a space that serves to isolate the form of each figure. The figures in her paintings exist in situations – or as objects – in which Murphy hopes the viewer will find a little of themselves.

Sarah Winkler’s work focuses primarily on the Western American landscape – specifically the geology of mountain and desert environments and how these terrains intersect and overlap. Beginning her works with a layer of matte acrylic paint, Winkler then uses resists such as solvents, ground water, salt, carving, heat, and sanding tools to mimic the kinetic processes of erosion and deposition, thereby building layered landscapes rendered in mineral-rich shards and swells of luminous color with a history of gestures and actions that form into naturalistic abstracted landscapes.

“Past | Present” by Pamela Murphy and Sarah Winkler show card