Biography

Angela Murray is a contemporary Irish painter based in London. Murray trained at Winchester School of Art, graduating with a BA in Fine Art before gaining an MA in Curating & Commissioning Contemporary Visual Art from the RCA. ‘My work is inspired and informed by both landscape and seascape. The expansive landscape of my native Ireland, particularly along The Wild Atlantic Way, stretching from Donegal in the North to Galway in the West, as well as the places I visit, are a constant source of pleasure, allowing investigations in colour and extensive mark making to play across the canvas. I prefer to paint on linen or on heavy watercolour paper as both act as a perfect ground and backdrop to much of the light I’m attempting to capture. They also add an organic texture to the work because of the materiality of the surfaces My process is sensitive and intuitive, layering paint then scraping back to reveal lost areas of colour and texture. In the watercolour works the brush moves quickly to capture sweeping skies and deep horizons before the paint begins to dry. Many of the pieces incorporate gold or silver leaf as I build up surfaces and, most important of all, is the use of colour in complex and unexpected ways. I like to use hues of one colour, building up ever more vivid layers of pure pigment. This is incredibly important in keeping an authenticity to the landscape I’m representing.