I met Dierdre Murphy for our studio visit at Rolling Hill Park on one of the first true days of spring. She strode up the forested lane with a bright smile, and I followed her to a yellow cottage nestled among the trees and many meandering hiking trails. Bathed in the sound of tweeting of birds, Murphy explained her long history of working with the Lower Merion Conservancy both as a volunteer and as their Climate Artist-in-Residence. There, she has created several site-specific works, including a spectacular mural translating bird migration data into bright organic shapes.
A teacher for over 25 years, Murphy is a confident communicator and an impassioned artist. She has a long history of collaborating with environmental institutions, scientists, and other creatives, fusing direct observation within a scientific framework to create representations of nature that are both sensory and cerebral. She converts ecological data into powerful abstractions, paints colorful representations of nests and forests, and pulls delicate prints of local plants. Her work successfully decenters the human perspective, highlighting the urgent need for conservation and collective care.
Tell me how your journey as an artist began?
As a toddler, sitting for hours drawing in my dad’s lab as he worked on scientific experiments imprinted on me, and it still has a profound effect on my studio practice. My studio has been in a closet, an office, a bedroom, a basement, a warehouse, a garage, a kitchen table, and a cottage in the woods. Being an artist has been at the core of my being. No matter where I have lived, I have carved out time and space to work. Out of grad school, when I had no money for paint, I used nail polish. As a new mother nursing my baby, I painted during naptime at the kitchen table. Now, as a professor, I paint when I am not teaching. God willing, I will be painting into my 90’s!
I would love to hear about your studio practice. How does this space shape the way you work? Are there any creation rituals that are particularly important to your practice?
Showing up is most important. As a young woman, I knew that I needed to work twice as hard, so I am very strict about studio days. I have always had jobs that allowed for studio time. For instance, out of undergraduate school with a fresh BFA (which meant no real art jobs), I worked as a pastry chef’s assistant. I worked four ten-hour shifts that started at 5 am, so I could work in the studio in the afternoons and had three-day weekends to paint.
Each studio day, I step into the studio and put on my painting apron. This is like punching the clock or putting on a uniform. It gets me in the mindset of being a painter. Trying to leave the noise of life, mother, wife, teacher, friend, daughter outside the studio door so I can go deep to create. Drawing is essential, and I have a play/collage wall where anything can happen–my petri dish of failures that might have a spark of something new.
After the studio, I try to walk to clear my head in the woods and observe, perceive with an open mind what the universe is teaching me.
As you have developed as an artist, what moments or detours shaped the way you work today?
Born in NYC, we moved overseas for my father’s science career that took our family to France, England, Australia, Memphis, and back to NY and Ohio. Travel has always been a school of being and knowledge for my parents, and they have passed that on to their 5 children. Museums are my cathedral of learning and a place of awe. Growing up internationally, I have felt at home being an outsider, and feeling like a citizen of the world culturally broadens one’s palette.
At 17, I graduated from high school in Ohio and went to Japan for a year. This was pivotal to becoming an artist and continues to inform my work. The school of life is every bit as valuable as academia. Mentor artists Wilbur Niewald and Lester Goldman at KCAI, who taught me the rigor of working day in and day out. Niewald’s gift was perception, and Goldman’s was playful invention and the continual ingestion of ideas.
Working in the Gamblin Oil Paint factory was akin to a post-baccalaureate degree with paintmaker Robert Gamblin. This is where I learned color theory and the science behind the oil paint in the tube. It has informed my studio practice and my teaching to this day.
Susana Jacobson, Barbara Grossman, and John Moore at UPENN, from grad school, taught me the rigor of critical thinking.
Being a mother and seeing the world through a child’s eyes has also profoundly shaped who I am and how I perceive.
I know you like to work in series. What themes do your series touch on, and how does creating a series feed your work?
Series are a helpful way to tap into a deep vein and explore. Sense of place seems to drive the content, such as being airborne, inside, outside, and within. Birds have been the conduit to think of the “other” and to be able to be in two places at once, such as in the air, on a branch, and on the earth all at once.
What questions are you trying to answer through your work right now, even if you’re not sure of the answers yet?
New ways of seeing, of tapping into awe, of opening a sensorial way of being.
You have a long history of collaboration with other creatives and scientific professionals. What was the experience like? Does it result in unexpected work?
Collaboration is key to my process, both in research with scientists through residencies and research opportunities, but also with other artists. I have collaborated with my husband, Scott White, on sculpture projects and most recently with Yvonne Love, sculptor and professor at Penn State.
True collaboration breaks down walls of thought, softens the ego, and sets aside the rules that internally keep us bound. Field Notes: Learning to See collaboration with Yvonne was so freeing, even when I thought I messed up a piece beyond recognition, she resurrected it, like a phoenix from the fire. The show opens April 19 at the John James Audubon Center outside Philly, and I am so excited to see the work together for the first time. We live in different states and mailed the work to each other 4 to 6 pieces at a time in a call-and-response fashion. The only rules were that there were no rules, with the exception that we started with 12 pieces of paper of all the same size.
You are an assistant teaching professor at Lehigh University, a parent, and an artist with multiple shows this year. Time management must be important to your practice. How do you balance business and studio time?
I am strict. I can check my email at the beginning of the day, at lunch break, or at the end. No phone/social media, etc. during the studio session. Life is a huge distraction, and it always is gnawing away at precious studio time. You have to be fierce and stand your ground–even to family and friends.
I allow myself a day or two a month to look for grants, residencies, and exhibition opportunities. I make a list with dates and choose a few to apply to. Once a season, I upkeep my website and send a newsletter if my exhibition schedule merits communication. I hire students to help me with the tech and design work. Asking for help is KEY. We can’t do it all, and asking for help is a sign of strength.
Are there any opportunities or projects you are particularly excited about right now?
I have a show opening on April 19 titled “Home Making” at the John James Audubon Center. Heather Moqtaderi is an amazing curator, and we made herbarium wallpaper for the show, which I am so excited to see as an installation of my work. In addition, “Field Notes: Learning to See” collaborative drawing with Yvonne Love will be in John James Audubon’s historic estate. Audubon is a huge mentor of mine, so this is a dream project. Finally, I am participating in “The Aviary Project” through Audubon Magazine, where they commissioned me to do a painting. This will be published this summer.
About the writer: Claire Haik is a Philadelphia artist and educator whose work explores the hidden processes of nature. Using oil, acrylic, and hand-crushed, locally sourced pigments, she creates abstracted representations of landscapes and scientifically inspired imagery. Her work has been featured in SciArt in America and Issues in Science and Technology, and she was awarded the Lois and Charles X Carlson Landscape Residency and Experience Economies: Landscape Experience residency at Mildred’s Lane. Haik holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited at Pulse Miami and at galleries throughout the Northeast. See her art and learn more about her here.