36” x 36” Oil on Canvas 2024

“My paintings and ceramics flirt with the line between fine art and decoration, using both trending and vintage colours, patterns, and objects that evoke the quotidian, the nostalgic, and the ritual aspects of space. In my practice, I explore feelings of self-reflection, inner emotional well-being, absence, presence, emptiness and memory.

The idea of home is a charged concept - for some they are spaces of refuge and a threshold of security, for others they are places of violence and confinement. I began exploring these multiple readings of home early in my artistic practice and manipulated the domestic space using visual disruptions such as veils, blurring, abstraction, and perspectival manipulations. I manifested ideas of intrusion, belonging, secrecy, and self-protection. Many years later, these intentions have grown towards navigating solitude, loss and acceptance.

In my most recent body of work, “Where the Light Comes In”, I often found myself reflecting upon Matisse and the patterns, colours and simplification of his still life paintings while I was painting in my studio. I borrowed many passages from his work and interpreted and manipulated them using a computer program to merge his paintings with different combinations of my own researched images.  l like to think of these works as “Conversations with Matisse” although it’s a one-sided discussion.”

~Eileen Murray

Eileen Murray holds a B.F.A with Great Distinction from the University of Lethbridge (2005), and an M.F.A Painting & Photography from the University of Saskatchewan (2012). She is currently represented across Canada and her paintings are in numerous public and private collections in Canada, the U.S., the UK and Mexico