Catherine Murphy
Working Drawing (One-eighty), 2026

Graphite on paper

Unframed: each 11 1/8 x 11 inches (28.26 x 27.9 cm)

Framed: 20 x 32 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches (50.8 x 82.6 x 3.8 cm)

Courtesy of the artist and Peter Freeman, Inc.

Selected by Julia Trotta

Catherine Murphy (b. 1946, Cambridge, MA) studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 1966, following which she obtained a BFA at the Pratt Institute, New York in 1967. For 22 years, she served as Senior Critic at Yale University Graduate School of Art. Murphy has exhibited at institutions throughout the United States, including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and her work is held in numerous public collections including those of the Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.  Murphy lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Murphy, who works from direct observation, has transformed the quotidian into the extraordinary since the 1970s. In her paintings the artist proffers views of existing or imagined scenarios staged in and around her home and studio in Poughkeepsie, New York. Taking as her focus overlooked and unexpected viewpoints, Murphy reframes and shifts the scale of the objects that surround her. Through her fastidious and tactile depictions of the material world, her compositions become worlds within themselves.