TitleSumacs
Artist
Catherine E. Murphy
(American, b. 1946)
Date1984
MediumOil on paper
DimensionsSheet size: 12 × 15 3/4 in.
Mat size: 19 7/8 × 23 5/8 in.
SignedSigned verso lower left: "Catherine Murphy (C) 1985"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of Catherine Murphy
Object number2003.25
Label TextCatherine Murphy studied at Pratt Institute and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the mid- to late-1960s at a time when reductive abstraction was the dominant artistic mode. She emerged in the early 1970s with a solo exhibition at the First Street Gallery, New York and was included in a number of important group shows that highlighted the realist trend in American paintings. She paints in a highly realistic style, but unlike many of her realist contemporaries who may specialize in one particular subject or work from photographs, Murphy works from life and paints a variety of subject matter. Since 1989 Catherine Murphy has held the position of Senior Critic in Painting and Printmaking at the Yale University School of Art. "Sumacs" shows a tangle of this the Smooth Sumac type of tree likely in the late autumn as most of the leaves have left the branches. The shadows are long in this painting and it is difficult not to associate this scene with the passage of time and from one season to the next. The artist has stated: "My paintings are about time passing. Time is depicted in a very different way than most people even think about time--which is cinematically, and though a camera's eye."
