A QUIET NORMAL LIFE: 2011

Megan Murphy is a conceptual artist based in Sun Valley, Idaho. Her work explores historical events and locations, examining how humanity is informed by the subjectivity of recorded history. Murphy's artistic practice combines elements of film, video, technology, painting, and the impression of the written word.

Murphy's process involves layering, sanding, and engraving with paint, creating a visual language of reflection and illumination. Her paintings function both physically and metaphorically to illuminate history through a double reflection - the symbolic reflection on historical time present in the layered, ghostly images, and the literal reflection of the viewer's face in the mirror-backed surfaces.

In her installation "A Quiet Normal Life" at Volta New York in 2011, Murphy presented four large paintings on low-iron glass and mirror. The images were based on photographs taken in an old-growth cedar forest on the Canadian border of Idaho. Murphy applied between 20 and 40 layers of paint and text, creating the final surface through a process of addition and subtraction.

The text in Murphy's works combines poetry and essays on time, including excerpts from Saint Thomas Aquinas, Wallace Stevens, and Kim Barnes. These textual elements examine presence through silence and place. The effect of standing before these works is to see oneself reflected within the faded layers of history, creating a unique viewing experience that encourages introspection about time, history, and one's place within it.

Murphy's art continues to explore the space between the written and unwritten, the seen and unseen, belief and non-belief. Her work has been recognized with fellowships and is held in various public and private collections.