North Carolina-based artist Murphy Ayala paints nostalgic structures with a sense of belonging.
Architecture is the basis of my art practice. Using parallels between architecture and painting, I explore the subjects of buildings and structures through a historic lens, social and political issues related to housing and preservation, and aesthetic interests in principles of design such as pattern, repetition, and geometry.
My paintings are executed much in the same way I have worked as an architect and are fortified over time spent inquiring, studying, and researching subjects. My practice often involves collaboration with others to deepen meaning and make stronger connections.
Using abstract compositions that hone in on specific architectural elements such as windows and doors, my paintings are about conveying literal and metaphorical relationships between architecture and its impact on lifestyle, well-being, and human existence.
Artist Biography
Murphy Trogdon Ayala’s personal experiences and academic study create the underpinnings of her work. Her self-described vernacular undeniably derives from her triangulated experiences within architecture, painting, and her southern culture.
Murphy was an artist and partner of an architectural firm for many years after graduating from the College of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She later transitioned from this career to bridge her interests into painting and soon after emerged from the arts community of Charlotte, North Carolina as an avid, en plein air landscape painter, exhibiting her work and participating in dozens of classes with established painters. Over time, she solidified her interests and expertise in architecture within her paintings, exploring not just how things are created but why they are designed as they are.
For Murphy, her subjects take time to explore, research, and analyze. She often collaborates with others in order to deepen meaning and make important relationships, much in the same way she executed projects as an architect. Murphy examines and calculates history through form, gripping the ever-present what was and breathing life into the what is that beams through her work. Her paintings broadly encompass architecture through a historic lens, social and political issues related to housing and preservation, with an aesthetic for geometry and principles of design such as pattern, balance, and repetition. The Rosenwald Series and Rural Lines are recent bodies of work that reach deep into architecture from various vantage points, urging viewers to work with up-close, abstract views and compositions that are void of human life to contemplate relationships between the architectural subjects and human existence and well-being.
Murphy works from her studio space at Anchorlight, a studio community of Raleigh, North Carolina where she also resides. Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and private collections across the Southeast and is available for viewing at murphyayala.com
Juried Exhibitions
SCOPE 2014: The Southern Landscape, Raleigh, NC
2017 North Ridge Art Gala, Raleigh, NC
Awards
2017 North Ridge Art Gala, People’s Choice Award, Raleigh, NC