Michael Murfin
12th November to 3rd December 2005
Michael Murfin writes:
The making of the recent pastel drawings that you see here has rekindled the vigour of technique and intensity of feeling that I produced in work over twenty years ago at the beginning of my professional artistic career.
I am so pleased to be able to show you my big paper studies – there aren't many galleries where this sort of work can be shown in all its raw and sometimes rather unwieldy state. Indeed, if there hadn't been the place to show them, some of the ideas may not have materialized at all.
In an interview of 1919 Matisse said that once you have explored as far as you can go in a particular direction you must change course, if only as a matter of hygiene.
I remember one early art lesson at secondary school when a fellow pupil, Shirley Frazer, walked in with a beautiful plant drawing and I thought: “So that's how its done.”
There has been a hint of nostalgia attached to the small observation drawings. They remind me of sitting at the dining table, doing my homework. It was there that I learnt to spend time quietly setting down thoughts about the world I could see around me, making a foundation for all the pictures that have come along since then.