An exhibition of new paintings and old sculptures by Craig Murray-Orr.
Craig Murray-Orr was born in 1942 in Lower Hutt on the southern edge of New Zealand's North Island and studied at the Ilam School of Fine Art in Christchurch in the early 1960s. In 1968 he came to London and a few years later found himself arriving on a blind date at a house in Dartmouth Park on the edge of Hampstead Heath. He has been there ever since. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1973 and aside from his work as a painter and sculptor he is best known for his radio collaborations in the 1990s with the Scottish poet and humorist Ivor Cutler.
His paintings on wooden panels are always small in scale - hovering on the edge of abstraction and steeped in memory and personal meaning. They appear to be landscapes, and feel like they come from somewhere, but the landscape itself is simply a vehicle for the artist’s depiction of an emotional and mental state. They are tiny poems.
Back in 2015, interviewed for a book about his work, Craig was asked to describe what these paintings are about: “Feelings. Emotions. Colour, tone and marks. I’m not trying to tell anyone anything. They are not demonstrative. But hopefully they are powerful. They are explanations to myself really, and to no-one else, but when they work, they hopefully have meaning for other people because I’m not so different from everybody else”.
To celebrate the artist’s 80th birthday we will present a series of his newest paintings, alongside selected sculptures made from found wooden objects.
Booking is required as capacity is limited
Please RSVP directly to info@inglebygallery.com