Recent Paintings

At Winchester Galleries on Humboldt

May 8 - 29, 2010

Opening:
Saturday, May 8, 2010   2 pm – 4 pm

Abe Murley in attendance.

Abe Murley is a young artist living and working in Victoria B.C. and has been making art all his life.  Encouraged by teachers at every stage Abe completed a BFA at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and studied at the Art Students League in New York City.  Abe considers his independent explorations to be at least as important as his academic training: attending museums and galleries throughout North America, travelling and meditating in India, studying his intimates and his environment.  Hardly a naive artist, Abe’s work in paint, drawing and printmaking media refers to realist traditions but is not confined by them.

Abe's latest oil paintings tweak the traditional genre of the group portrait.  Interior spaces and the inhabitants are arranged (or re-arranged) with intentional bending of pictorial rules.  "One conspicuous feature of these paintings is the manipulation of pictorial space.  For me this is an exercise of creative freedom which seems appropriate to our day; if it disorients the viewer that is a good thing because it may cause us to see familiar things anew."