"What I want more than anything else in my life and
in my painting is, however I get there, for things to unify
and for things to come together."
"It's like being a safe breaker in those movies where
they've got their ear up against the safe and you are listening
for the right click, for the right cylinders to drop down."
"You're confronted when you are looking at a painting
where you don't have specific images to efface or a figure
or a landscape. You're confronted with something that you
are challenged to resolve and unify..."
"It's an arrangement, like you're arranging your living
room or you're arranging your face in the morning. It's
so integral to all of us..."
"It’s soft and hard, just like we were talking
about the goofiness and the more serious elements. These
things are coming together. And it's metaphoric really."
Tell us about "Bop."
What's the inspiration behind it?
MURRAY:
Well it has some predecessors.
For a couple of years I've been working with cutting out shapes
and kind of glomming them together and letting it go where
it may. Like basically making a zigzag shape and making a
rectangular shape and a circular bloopy fat cloudy shape and
just putting them all together and sort of letting the cards
fall where they may. And I don’t know why I am doing
it this way. What I want more than anything else in my life
and in my painting is, however I get there, for things to
unify and for things to come together. And it felt when I
first started these, which was exciting, "Well, I am
going someplace else now."
I'm working flat. It's not three dimensional even though the
shapes are cut out and they have different kinds of perimeters.
But I'm going to resolve these in a different way and I don’t
know how they are going to resolve. The psychological part
of it was just starting something that I had no idea how to
put together. Another part of it for me is to use very intense
color, or different kinds of color. Intense color, pastels.
I'd never worked with pastels before, which I've always thought
of as like sweet and cloying and sort of candy like. Not so
much in this painting, but it has happened in some other paintings.
So with the color and with the shape and with the drawing
inside of the shape—really it's just simply trying to
make it work somehow. And letting myself really not know how
it was going to happen, except that all of these shapes are
stuck on to each other in some kind of way. Sort of like a
weird fence or a weird lattice thing. And it's been very frustrating
and really fascinating working into these paintings. And I've
found with this particular painting that I just haven't been
able to stop on it, because I think one of the parts of working
this way is that there are so many different combinations
of things. It's like being a safe breaker in those movies
where they've got their ear up against the safe and you are
listening for the right click, for the right cylinders to
drop down.
Sometimes it's felt really like that, like I'm just painting
and painting and painting until the right thing happens. And
with all of my work, I think every artist has this: you leave
it at night and you come back and you think, "Wow I've
got it, I've got it!" And then you come back in the morning
and it's gone. It looks awful.
ART:21:
People are mystified by artists
when they say, "This works, this doesn't work."
Can you be more specific about that process?
MURRAY:
Well, I think that what you are
looking for—what I'm looking for is resolution. And I
can get it in my paintings, finally, for myself. In my life,
it goes in and out. I have it one day and I don't have it
the next day. But that's why being an artist is so great because
you can get that kind of satisfaction.
The thing that has been hard about these paintings is that
I don't know how I am going to get them resolved. It's like
the resolution has to happen without anybody seeing it, not
even me. But I know that it's there, I feel that it’s
there. There's a moment when I start to feel it with this
painting and I don’t think I could describe it, but I
do feel that with it. Because I can stop it, I can stop now.
And when I look at it, instead of it being this battle or
this conflict that I have to try to pull together, I can look
at it peacefully. But then I feel like the challenge is when
you're looking at it what happens to you? Like I'm passing
it off to you now and basically I am not really going to see
this painting much anymore. Maybe two or three years from
now I might be able to see it if I saw it someplace, but it's
really kind of up to you because everybody will see it in
a different kind of way and it will mean different things.
I think it's like that. You're confronted when you are looking
at a painting where you don't have specific images to efface
or a figure or a landscape. You're confronted with something
that you are challenged to resolve and unify in some way,
because there is a unity there. I keep harping on this—and
that's what has to work. What has to work is it has to resolve
in secret almost. There has to be resolution there. There
has to be some kind of a unification of the shapes and of
the colors. And that's the big thing. It just may be in a
very surprising kind of way. In a way that you can’t
really say "It does this, it does that." See how
the red works with that green over their, see those three
shades and how it makes this arc across the space. And it's
not just formal.
It's an arrangement, like you're arranging your living room
or you're arranging your face in the morning. It's so integral
to all of us—that kind of arrangement—that makes
the form of the painting.
ART:21:
Can you quickly walk me through
the process of making these paintings?
MURRAY:
Okay. I start in one of my little
notebooks. I just am scribbling around, get the idea, usually
really quickly, and then I put it into my overhead projector
and blow it up on the wall. I do a big drawing. Then I usually
put another piece of paper over that and correct that and
do another drawing. Then these two young artists, who are
the carpenters, take the drawing to their shop and cut out
the wood. And I go over at least once to see what they are
doing when it is sort of three quarters through. Maybe I go
over twice. Then they bring it back in. The forms are cut
out of wood. Like a regular stretcher except a cloud shape.
They are really made exactly like that. And then they are
covered with canvas and sized with rabbit skin glue and gesso.
And then they come to me and I start to work on them.
ART:21:
Do you ever change the forms
once they arrive at your studio?
MURRAY:
Sometimes I'll take things away
and add things right then. Usually I don’t change things
until I start working on it. In this one I didn’t change
any juxtapositions. And I didn't have any desire to. I mean
it's hard to do, they're wet, you have to take them off the
wall it's really goofy to take things out, it's a mess. But
I do it. This other one I took things out. We took it off
the wall and there were some other little pieces in it that
are maybe in the first shots of this and we removed those.
And those are the only changes that I made.
ART:21:
These forms are somewhat abstract
and somewhat recognizable. Tell me about this interplay.
MURRAY:
I want both. I want all things.
I want everything. I want to be able to say, "Oh, that's
a cloud with windows, or that's just this floating weird bloopy
shape with cut outs." Because I enjoy that. I enjoy the
possibilities of all of these forms. And this is absolutely
from the past too, you know like you get those books on how
to do cartooning. You have a circle. Then you put two circles
on top. And then you put a little nose in there and a little
thing and pretty soon you have Mickey Mouse. And that's so
much fun. I just like that. I don't know if I could tell you
more than that. And I think it is very obvious too, and I
think it's very corny. I just sort of accept really.
ART:21:
The humor part of it. They're
serious paintings and their goofy paintings. Can you talk
about that?
MURRAY:
That feels like the very crux
of it. I suppose that's how I feel about life. You know, why
do people laugh at Charlie Chaplin when he walks in to a manhole?
Like what makes you laugh? It's something about life and about
accepting. Life is tragic and funny and you get into horrible
situations and you go on.
I really feel very deeply, in terms of living, that it's not
something that I feel I have control over. I don't feel like
that's a conscious decision. I think it's a part in my work
that I make conscious. Obviously, like it fascinates me because
I do it again and again and again and it doesn't make me tired.
It's my trying to understand what it is really that makes
me do the paintings.
ART:21:
Was there any area of this painting
that was horrendously difficult?
MURRAY:
Yes...the whole painting was
painful. When I did the drawings for this painting I was very
excited. They looked really great to me and then I blew it
up. And the guys who make these forms for me put it together,
made it, and it came back into the studio. And the minute
I saw it I didn’t see how it was going to go together
at all, even before I touched it. Just the way the forms were
working—I just thought "What was I thinking of?
This is going to be horrible!" And it was really a long
journey with this painting.
The colors I thought I was going to use—none of them
worked in the beginning. But that's nothing new. I found instead
of it seeming to get easier as I've gotten older it's really
gotten harder. And I think it's because I know a lot more.
I'm much more demanding. I've done this and I don’t want
to go back into those places. I want something different.
Even if it doesn't come out different in the end it has to
feel different while I'm doing it. So it takes me a longer
time to kind of move through them. And there are just so many
possibilities that I am aware of. And they are complicated
paintings. I think these paintings are complicated. I don’t
think they are easy to see.
ART:21:
Do you think it's because of
all the parts and multiple surfaces?
MURRAY:
Yes. I'm leaving out the physical
air in between them, so they are like a kind of latticework
or a sort of fence. And the way the wall works, the negative
spaces really make a difference for these paintings. And intentionally
each shape is in a way in conflict with the next shape, even
though once you start to get into it I think it's pretty apparent
that the round shape butts up against the hard shape. It’s
soft and hard, just like we were talking about the goofiness
and the more serious elements. These things are coming together.
And it's metaphoric
really. Those are real metaphors.
ART:21:
What would you compare making
a painting to?
MURRAY:
Well, I think it's really like
playing. Really very similar to how a kid plays, somehow.
You've got so many toys around. Carol Dunham was in the studio
a couple days ago looking at this painting and he said, "You
know, it's like you are in your playroom and you are just
picking up these different shapes and throwing them on the
wall and then putting them together and seeing what kind of
a game you can make out of them." I think that's pretty
explanatory of what it feels like to make them, and very close
to the kind of feeling that I want to get out of them, and
I think I want you to get out of them to.
