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Biography

I am a Bay Area artist and designer. I'm also a Kama'aina - born and raised on the island of Oahu. The tropics, and the Asian art influences so prevalent in the islands, continue to leave a strong mark on my current work.

I moved to the the Bay Area to attend the San Francisco Art Institute and from that base launched numerous solo painting exhibits on both coasts. Interests that frame my current artistic directions include the study of line and flat color fields, almost anything related to science, art, and technology (most recently spin-offs from neurobiology), and of course Hawaiiana.

My other professional directions all feed my art. Among those are audio engineering, film sound recording and design, electronic music composition, graphic design and web development. I am the founding partner and lead designer at Ghostdog Design, a web design company serving primarily start-ups and biotechnology. I bring digital skills, learned in the design world, to traditional media as I segue from web development toward full-time fine art endeavors.

I live in Burlingame, CA, with my family, a morose but sincere dog, and a Zen cat that falls over when you pet him. 

A Note About Technique & Media

My color and compositional approach are influenced by Asian and tropical landscapes blended with western abstraction. The off-beat, the whimsical, the edgy, and wonderfully amazing science topics fuel my conceptual direction.

Work is available as either an original painting or limited-edition print. For the paintings I use unprimed canvas or archival paper as a base. Washes and inks are applied repeatedly to a horizontal, flat canvas to build each section of an image. Prints are on unprimed hand-prepared canvas or archival paper. A series of illuminated, layered Plexiglas works have recently captured my attention.

Translations
Each print in a limited edition is a 'translation' of the original painting into a new piece that has many of the originals elements, but includes new visual components. These components are painted as separate objects, using acrylics and inks, then integrated into the digital version of the image. This new composite piece becomes a member of a limited edition.

Studio

My studio is located at Museum Studios, Studio #29, 1777 California Drive, Burlingame, CA. 94010. See also Neil Murphy's Artist page on the Museum Studios website.

Blogs | Exhibitions | Publications

Blogs
Blog: Neil Murphy Working in the Edge: by Leigh Toldi
Blog: Corporate Art Installation: Avalanche Biotech, by Lainey Saint-Marie

Exhibitions
2016: Group Exhibit, Transparency, Museum Studios, Peninsula Museum of Art, Nov. 3 - 13, 2016
2016: SPACES First Friday Exhibit, Menlo Park, CA., Ongoing participation
2016: Installation, corporate lobby, 525 University Ave., Palo Alto, CA. through Nov. 2016
2016: Featured Artist: Group Exhibit, Gallerie Mistral, Redwood City, CA, July 9 - October 8
2016: Group Exhibit, G25N, Juried, Online Gallery A, July
2016: PJCC Gallery Juried Exhibit, Foster City, CA., July 14 - September 25
2016: Group Exhibit, Tessellation, Museum Studios, May 6 - May 22
2016: Featured Artist, Philz, Burlingame, May - June
2016: Group Exhibit, Expansion, Peninsula Museum of Art, Jan. - Feb.
2015: Group Exhibit, Lost and Found, Museum Studios Gallery, Sept. - Dec.
2015: Group Exhibit, Paying it Forward, Coastal Arts Enterprises, Curator Lainey Saint-Marie, July - Aug.
2015: Installation, Avalanche Biotechnology, Neurobiology series, June - Sept.
2015: Group Exhibit, "Dimensions" Peninsula Art Institute, May
2014: Group Exhibit, "Science, Technology and the Future of Art" Pacific Art League, Thru Nov.
2014: Group Exhibit, "Shadows" Peninsula Art Institute, Thru Nov. 16th
2014: ArtCompetition.net international juried competition, honorable mention "Water" Essence of Life.
2014: PJCC Gallery Juried Exhibit (First place, Mixed media), Foster City, CA
2014: Aesthetica Magazine, Issue 59, June/July
2014: Peninsula Art Institute Gallery, Group Show
2014: Neil Murphy: Hawaii Artist in the Bay Area, Posted by Paula Rath, paularath.com
2013: Group Exhibit, Small Works, Peninsula Art Institute
2013: Group Exhibit, October-December, Art Liaisons @ Mistral in Redwood City, CA
2013: Solo Exhibition: Curious Maps of Impossible Places, PAI Gallery Exhibits.
2013: Ionic Magazine Issue 4, The Retina ’s Unintuitive Wiring − Why Did Evolution Do That?
2013: Finalist - California State Capital Painting Exhibit
2012: PJCC Gallery Juried Exhibit (Second place, 2D work), Foster City, CA
2012: Monterey Museum of Art, Miniatures Exhibit, Nov. 14 - Dec 31, 2012, Monterey, CA
2012: Silvia White Gallery, Juried group show, Ventura, CA Opening reception photos
2012: Pacific Art League Main Gallery, Juried Exhibit "Pressing Matters" Nov 2-29, 2012, Palo Alto, CA
2011 Caldwell Gallery, Redwood City, CA

Early Influences

The exhibits listed below are not current, but were important to my growth as an artist. They represent a period in the 70's/80's when I was pursuing a career as a full-time artist - and before I added graphic design, audio engineering, and sound composition to my professional mix.

- S.F. MOMA "Mix Graphics II" San Francisco, CA., group exhibit
- Wenger Gallery, Solo exhibition, San Francisco, CA.

Thomas Albright (S.F. Chronicle Art Critic) review of first solo exhibit, Wenger Gallery, S.F.   6/29/74

- Zara Gallery, Solo exhibition, San Francisco, CA.
- Woodward Gallery, Solo exhibition, Scottsdale, Arizona
- Arras Gallery, Solo exhibition, N.Y., N.Y.
- The Julie Gallery, Solo exhibition, N.Y., N.Y.
- Downtown Gallery, Honolulu, Hawaii
- Oakland Museum Collectors Gallery, Oakland, CA.
- Walnut Creek Art Center, Walnut Creek, CA. "The Fine Arts Presses, A Survey of Master Printmaking"

Education in Brief

CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), Stanford University, CA.,
San Francisco Art Institute, S.F., CA.,
University of Hawaii, East-West Center,
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Michigan

It All Began in Hawaii

The Oahu imprint remains strong. I love poi (really), being underwater, lomi salmon, slack-key guitar, tropical rain in the forest, and the trade winds.

   
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Thomas Albright, Art Critic, S.F. Chronical, Review of Wenger Gallery Exhibit    June 29, 1974

Neil Murphy's paintings at the Wenger Gallery, 855 Montgomery street, are inspired by some very complex ideas involving music and mathematics. According to Leslie Wenger, a large painting of a Hawaiian mountain range is based on Murphy's calculations of the harmonic system that would result if the valley in front of it were converted into one gigantic organ pipe.

It's all right with me is Murphy needs such concept to inspire what he does, so long as he does not dispense with painting, for these are among the freshest, most lyrical canvasses to come along in some time.

Murphy uses various dyes that are stained into linen and other fine-grained material to form transparent, ambiguous atmospheres in which he floats wiry lines drawn in ink and spots of radiant pastels.

Some of this paintings are relatively naturalistic views of cliffs and rocks, all in deep blues, amid which white lines curl toward arrows at their ends, forming both river currents and vectors of movement and energy. Others are more abstract, sprinkled with tiny arrows, free-form geometric shapes and other simple but eccentric forms, although the sense of nature, and of natural forces, is never far away these tiny shapes hover in indeterminate spaces, linked together by lines of force that are sometimes visible, sometimes the function of minutely calculated intervals and relationships, and they form a fascinating visual analogy to the erratic rhythms and effects of electronically mixed and natural sounds that Murphy has designed to complement his paintings.

One thinks of Paul Klee in looking at Murphy's work, as in discussing its relationship to mathematics and music, but more as an undertone that as a dominating influence, and for the most part, one thinks of Neil Murphy.