ABOUT
the ARTIST
Architecture is the basis for Murphy’s body of work. Drawing parallels between architecture and painting, Ayala explores 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.
Depictions of the rural South, these longstanding structures serve as a constant in an ever-changing landscape.
Ayala’s approach to painting is comparable to her process as an architect. Often beginning as a collaborative effort; her initial time is spent inquiring, studying, and researching subjects to gain deeper meaning and make stronger connections in her work.
Her paintings initiate a dialogue exploring the intricate relationship between architecture and its impact on life, well-being, and the human experience—both in literal and metaphorical terms.
Re-contextualizing architectural elements, particularly windows and doors, through abstract compositions and moments in time.
Her style is characterized by a distinctive color palette and a bold interplay of light and shadow—shadows that often cut across the canvas. Meanwhile, the surrounding landscape or negative space is invigorated with layered values and intentional brushstrokes.
Murphy Ayala transforms seemingly ordinary, lifeless scenes into compellingly charged atmospheres. Her brushstrokes, though seemingly haphazard at times, reveal nuanced undertones, enticing the audience to contemplate a structure’s enduring presence and historical significance.
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.
Achievements
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2024
Anchorlight Artists: Supporting Western North Carolina
2017 – Present
Anchorlight: Semi-Annual Open House2020
NC Fine Arts Exhibition2017
North Ridge Art Gala, Raleigh, NCSCOPE 2014
The Southern Landscape, Raleigh, NC -
2017 North Ridge Art Gala, People’s Choice Award, Raleigh, NC
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American Women Artists
Oil Painters of America
Gold Card Costco ;)