A HOUSE SHAPED WHOLE FROM BONE

   Seeing herself as a process painter, Kate Murphy is forever pushing the boundaries of her material, rarely handling paint conventionally but using it more like plastic or plaster. Underpinning all of her work is a reverence for the materiality of paint as a quasi-sculptural medium.

Her paintings use the surfaces, textures and colours of domestic spaces to try to describe the very visceral, bittersweet experiences of longing, loss and nostalgia that certain objects and images can provoke.

The surfaces are very tough but tactile; shiny, poured paint contrasts with rough, carved lines or with scratched layers exposing the board below. The board is often drilled with multiple holes or repeatedly sliced through with a jig saw.

Sometimes found objects are used. Elsewhere, collage is used in conjunction with oil paint. The surfaces have the old, worn presence of neglected interiors, rusted shop signs or once-loved objects now languishing in the attic.

A graduate in fine art from NCAD, Kate Murphy has had solo exhibitions at the Wexford Arts Centre and the Talbot Gallery, a two-person exhibition at the Claremorris Gallery and has featured in groups shows at the RHA, the Model Gallery, Sligo, and the BEEP Painting Biennial, Wales.

Murphy has been shortlisted for the Golden Fleece Award and been awarded the  Artlinks bursary and the Wexford County Council visual arts bursary. Her work is in the collections of the OPW, Bank of Ireland and Wexford County Council, among others. Born in Dublin, she lives and works in Co. Wexford.