Liz Murphy
"In Contrast"
About the Artist
Liz Murphy is an abstract expressionist painter based in Montclair, New Jersey, just outside New York City. Born and raised in Surrey, England, she studied Graphic Design at Kingston University and went on to build a successful creative career in both London and New York.
Murphy previously founded and ran an interior design firm, an experience that continues to inform her approach to painting. She is deeply interested in how art lives within a space, creating work that carries a distinct energy to support and enhance the function of its environment.
Her paintings are known for their sophisticated use of color, layered surfaces, and strong compositional sensibility. Balancing intuition with structure, her process involves building, disrupting, and refining, allowing each piece to evolve into a resolved and dynamic whole.
Murphy’s work is held in private collections internationally and has been exhibited in New York and beyond. In addition to her studio practice, she is a respected mentor and teacher, guiding artists in developing their own visual language through a focus on color, contrast, and composition.
Artist Statement
This body of work explores contrast as a lived experience rather than a problem to resolve.
Rather than opposing forces canceling one another out, the paintings hold them in relationship. Intuition and structure, chaos and order, softness and strength, restraint and release coexist within the same space. The tension between them becomes generative, allowing each element to define and elevate the other.
The work is developed through a process of layering, disruption, and refinement. I begin instinctively, allowing movement, color, and form to emerge freely. Over time, a more discerning eye takes over, editing, adjusting, and rebalancing until a sense of cohesion is reached. What remains is not a fixed narrative, but a felt presence.
My background in design informs this process. Structure provides a framework that allows for greater freedom, while intuition keeps the work alive and responsive. The goal is not resolution in the traditional sense, but a state of equilibrium where complexity can exist without being simplified.
In In Contrast, each painting becomes a space where opposing qualities are not only accepted, but necessary. Together, they reflect a more honest experience of being human, layered, evolving, and held in tension.