Lyndsey Ingram is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Suzy Murphy, Distant Deeps or Skies. Murphy’s paintings act as portals into the terrain of memory and lived emotion. Both the small and monumental landscapes are not intended as representations of the natural world, but as abstracted images, each imbued with a profoundly personal dialogue.
In September 2024, Murphy participated in the Xenia artist retreat, nestled in the small Hampshire village of Upton Grey. With the golden Autumn light settling in, Murphy found peace in the British countryside and made unexpected discoveries in her surroundings, ultimately culminating in this new body of work. On reflection, Murphy described ‘The solitude of the studio, placed so perfectly in its setting, only served to feed the work further’. Before beginning the residency, Murphy felt a conscious pull towards the work of William Blake, a figure she has read and loved since childhood. With her pocket money as a young girl she bought a small pamphlet of Blake’s poetry, and this is still in her studio to this day.
Later, as a teenager, Murphy would spend time studying his pictures in Tate’s William Blake gallery, and has since always had a copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience to hand. Finding her own piece of Jerusalem amongst the meadows and woods of Hampshire, she began to engage with Blake’s spiritual and physical vision more directly. With Blake’s poems as her guide, Murphy began these most recent works by walking the rural terrain, collecting ideas and drawings in her notebook, a practice that has been consistent throughout her life. However, this time she held conscious lines from Blake’s ‘songs’ in her head and allowed them to gently settle in her mind’s eye as she worked.
After collecting this imagery during her time at Xenia, Murphy later worked these studies into larger pieces in the studio. This intuitive process of seeing and remembering was also part of Blake’s process, who similarly kept small notebooks to document his engagement with the evolving world around him. With titles dedicated to Blake’s poetry, these new paintings are a homage to Murphy’s enduring connection to the poet and his artistic vision.
Although rooted in the present, Murphy’s practice also reflects on landscapes and imagery from her past. Born in London’s East End during the 1960s, Murphy’s early years were spent in a crowded tenement just off the Whitechapel Road. Raised amidst a large Irish family, she later moved with her mother and stepfather to Alberta, Canada. This geographical displacement, along with the stark contrast between the urban world she knew and the vastness of the North American landscape, left a profound impact. It was in the road trips to the mountains and explorations of the prairies that Murphy first encountered the transcendent power of the natural world within these expansive spaces - this emotional connection to the landscape has remained throughout her life.
Upon returning to London, Murphy recalls the many visits she made with her cousins to Bethnal Green’s Museum of Childhood. The museum was free and they would travel there alone, as children - a place to play and spend time. In the large museum galleries, they discovered intricately designed and warmly lit antique doll houses. Markedly different from the cramped living arrangements of Murphy’s own family, this image of the miniature house unconsciously permeated into much of the artist’s work. Often set against vast snowy landscapes of her Canadian childhood, or deep green woodlands of her adult years, the motif of the small house remains stoic and unwavering in the centre of many of her compositions.
In both the large-scale canvases and the smaller, intimate paintings, Murphy’s landscapes do not pursue a visual likeness but seek what is emotionally true. Over time, her imagery has become increasingly distilled, this abstraction working in the pursuit of emotional resonance rather than visual accuracy. This exhibition is a culmination of not only her practice and personal symbolism, but also her love of William Blake. The poems of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, through Murphy’s lens, change from words to pictures to become this body of work.
