What is empirical may not be felt. What is felt might not be seen. What is seen might not be known. And all of this forms the basis of both faith and doubt. The drama of memory is built on the porosity of perception. In the landscape this is compounded by the fact that the light is moving, the peripheral is sensed (but remains unwitnessed) and, inevitably, the ‘truth’ of the view is going to change. To acknowledge the impossible and the simultaneous, the fragile and the archaic, is to paint a modern landscape.
Evolution in the paintings of Idris Murphy is slow. Even a fleeting glance will note the signposts he has made his own: the solitary swollen tree, the brilliant counter- intuitive colour, land-masses restlessly bursting at the seams of the square. Through the colour alone, you can recognise his griffe at several paces. But the changes that occur within his work, if quiet, are important.
– Anna Johnson, 2017 (catalogue essay)
