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Six of the Best, Part 7

Part 7 of an interview series in which I invite artists to respond to six questions about art, process, and creativity. Today's artist is John Murphy, who lives just outside Madrid in Spain.

"Heads," 2011


Philip Hartigan: What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why?

John Murphy: I spent many years making a kind of 'process painting' based on a very limited set of actions but now all my work created digitally.  Most of my pieces are composed of two parts. One part starts with paint on paper which then gets scanned into the computer and combined with vector/digital elements in photoshop and/or corel painter. I now work this way because the marriage of the hand made painted elements with the digital really excites me.

PH: What piece are you currently working on?

JM: I am working on some Illustrations for a festival in Cork, Ireland and I am also in the middle of a new series of silhouettes. 


"Silhouettes," 2012

PH: What creative surprises are happening in the current work?

JM: I am always looking for ways to reduce and refine my work to the essential and I regularly look for accidents and surprises in the work to lead me in new directions. I'm currently really excited by the possibilities of using just 2 elements the vector shape and the painted texture in my silhouettes series.

PH: What other artistic medium (or non-artistic activity) feeds your creative process?

JM: After living in various cities for 20 years or so we recently moved to the countryside. We now live in a small village in the mountains outside Madrid and there's nothing better than talking a walk in the country to get the creative juices flowing.

PH: What's the first ever piece of art you remember making?

JM: My earliest memory is in primary school we had an art prize where we had to make an image of an Knight. I was probably 9 or 10 years old.


Untitled, 2011

PH: Finally, and you can answer this in any way that's meaningful to you: why are you an artist?

JM: I have never really questioned why I make art I've just always done it. I don't delve any deeper.


If you liked this interview, and you'd like to keep up to date with the series, why not Subscribe, or sign-up via Google Connect, using one of the options over on the right? Thanks, and keep creating.
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