Elizabeth Murray, 2011
Oil on linen, 60” x 40”
Elizabeth Murray was born in 1940 in Chicago. Elizabeth’s works are in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim and the Hirshhorn Museum. In 1999, Elizabeth was the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. In 2006, the Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of her work spanning 40 years, and at that time, she was only the fourth woman to have had a retrospective at MoMA. In her obituary in 2007, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith described Elizabeth as a “New York painter who reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships and the nature of painting itself.” Elizabeth was a role model for many women artists that juggle a career as an artist and mother, but most importantly she was a role model to all artists. Elizabeth pursued her career with vigor, creating remarkable paintings, but she was also a kind and generous person. She was an artist’s artist.
I had the privilege of working closely with Elizabeth Murray on two large commissions for the New York subway. I always wanted to paint her portrait but never asked her. Several years after her death, I asked her husband for his blessing. Although working in some ways from memory, I mostly referenced photographs taken by Michael Kamber, former MTA photographer and photojournalist for the New York Times.
Oil on linen, 60” x 40”
Elizabeth Murray was born in 1940 in Chicago. Elizabeth’s works are in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim and the Hirshhorn Museum. In 1999, Elizabeth was the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. In 2006, the Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of her work spanning 40 years, and at that time, she was only the fourth woman to have had a retrospective at MoMA. In her obituary in 2007, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith described Elizabeth as a “New York painter who reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships and the nature of painting itself.” Elizabeth was a role model for many women artists that juggle a career as an artist and mother, but most importantly she was a role model to all artists. Elizabeth pursued her career with vigor, creating remarkable paintings, but she was also a kind and generous person. She was an artist’s artist.
I had the privilege of working closely with Elizabeth Murray on two large commissions for the New York subway. I always wanted to paint her portrait but never asked her. Several years after her death, I asked her husband for his blessing. Although working in some ways from memory, I mostly referenced photographs taken by Michael Kamber, former MTA photographer and photojournalist for the New York Times.