Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's staff management or ownership.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
A good morning, you'll find out with Pete and the
poet Cold, I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold, and.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We're on the air this morning with Katherine Murphy, a painter.
And before we get to Catherine in her decades of
brilliant work, we're going to go right to the poet
Coal for a weekly poem prayer incantation, Gold, please let
it roll.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Well, here's a nice little small one for you, the
titled Sunflower Summer sun Lingers, Winter Blues in the distance,
Wilting not allowed.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Wilting not allowed. I'm out of luck. That is a
nice short poem, you know, looking at some of the
thing comments made about you, people often refer to you
as a realist painter. What do they mean by that?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I don't refer to myself that way because I'm still
working on the word real which I finds be extremely
difficult to define. I call myself a representational painter because
I generally paint things that you can recognize, and so
I and I think the idea of realism, what does
it mean? When I was looking at your work, Pochett
(01:17):
with me a book, and one of the things some
of the paintings struck out at me as being almost
like a photograph. You know, Yeah, well, I work from observation.
I don't work in photographs. You were looking at a photograph,
so that's why it looked like a photograph. I think
the paintings themselves pretty much are usually larger than life size.
(01:40):
You pretty much know it's not a photograph, and there's
air and light, and really, what I do is I
translate three dimensions into two dimensions. So photographs are paint
from a photograph, you're translating two dimensions into two dimensions.
So I want them to be something other than a photograph.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
And they're a cousin to a photograph in the sense
that they're representational, but they're not accusin to the photograph
in the sense that it's really filtered through and through
you and back out to the world.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Yes, and I really think that with a photograph you're
seeing time in a very particular and prescribed way. But
when you're actually working from life, you see time and
space in a you're always adjusting. You're always adjusting for
what you're interested in and what you define more important
and what you feel like you need to know, so
(02:38):
that you're always adjusting. Time really makes a painting look
different from photograph when you see it as a painting,
But of course it's akin to photographs. I mean, you know,
the whole of our century and before are very influenced
by photography and by framing. And one of the thing
(03:00):
I find most interesting is in the i'll say seventeenth century,
nobody framed. Only artists framed, and only painters and people
who were drawing framed. Now everybody frames, every kid with
a phone, everybody's taking photographs all the time. It's become
(03:20):
a language. The idea of framing and deciding to frame
what's important has become an obsession for generations.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
To say what's important? I mean another way you might
put that is what to bless? Right?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Well, what I want you to recognize? Do you know
the work of Alice McDermott, the writer Alice McDermott. Oh,
she's fantastic. You should reader New Yorker. Very interesting woman. Yeah,
since she you would love them. I swear they're really
beautiful books. And she was talking about praying and believing
(04:02):
and what she believed in and what how what her
work and because she's a writer, what what relationship her
work has to something sacred? And she said, and I'm
going to paraphrase her very badly, and I but I
think she would understand is what she believed in that
is that there was an energy in everything and her
(04:27):
she was blessed to be able to make that energy visible.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And that's what I think making paintings is.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I think she's she said, make you know, to describe
the energy with words, but I always just think that
I'm making the energy visible.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I was going to point that out a little earlier,
sort of like looking at dimensions. I think I think
a painter might see that energy or that dimension differently
than a photographer would would see something.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Well, you know that something else is going to be involved.
A photographer can do it very quick and I think
it is a different relationship because I mean, I'm negotiating
reality every second of every day, you know, because I'm
I'm translating it from one thing to another. But a
photographer is doing that as well, but very quickly. And
it's all one thing. But it's it's it's an interesting dilemma.
(05:23):
I mean I really started doing making these paintings in
a world where there is our photographs to do something
quickly because I wanted to slow looking down. I just
wanted to make it slower. And when you're look at
my panties, even if you hate them, I generally slow
people down.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So the Alice mcsermat reference is interesting. My mother's maide
name was mccermat. No insane, your name is Murphy something.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Is my mother's name? Made name is O'Reilly?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Okay? So an Irish indeed, there's an Irish Catholic vibe. Yes. Yes.
And one of the things that I'm uh, the way
I see your work is in what you know I
used to call particularity. I mean I see the particular
thing and you know in uh the tradition that that
(06:19):
comes out of in terms of Catholicism, I guess the
I San Francis ASSISI was the one who really could
see the individual mouse to see the individual treaty and
you know it gets developed intellectually through dun Scotus and
uh whatnot? And what when I say whatnot? As a
post that's Thomas Aquinas. But the particularity has its full blooming.
(06:43):
I think in the poetry are on Manly Hopkins, who
has a poem called God's Grandeur, and the opening line
is and I think it's relevant to your work specifically.
I've thought this before, but the opening line is the
world is charged with the great of God. In charge
means every single thing. It's not some trees have it,
(07:06):
some trees don't. The world is charge.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
And things that you painters call it the moment of recognition,
and it's it's like, you know, you can go past
something a thousand times and then all of a sudden
it becomes something important for you to look at. And
I think that can happen with anything. It's like, uh,
there's you know, there's two ways to think about criticism.
(07:30):
The German critical tradition is you you you, you contemplate
and you think about the things that are worth thinking about.
And the French is anything, I will think about all
of it. I will think about criticism as I will.
I will analyze anything that comes my way, which is
(07:51):
very different, which is a very different mindset. But I'm
I'm I'm with the French in that one.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Okay, and yet it is something gold up there different
words and not words. I heard you. I mentioned that
when you paint, you're at its best, it's in a
wordless place, and wordlessness is non essentially a human place.
(08:18):
It's almost a divine place. So that you have any
comments on the experience of that or how.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
You get there, absolutely, And I know how, not how
I get there.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
But how.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I had a moment when I was very young. I
was not taught by people who painted representationally. I was
taught by abstract expressionists. And I was painting. I was
home in Massachusetts, and I was painting a suburban street,
and I was painting trees that were probably about half
(08:51):
a mile away, and they were way in the distance.
And although I couldn't feel it on my skin, a
breeze blue in the trees, and the breeze blew through
my body, and I knew that, in you know, fifteen hundreds,
I would have become a nun immediately, because it was
totally a moment of the sublime, and it certainly was
(09:16):
not accompanied by words. And I always think about painting,
and I always think about painting, particularly from life. It
is entirely abstract, and in that abstraction. The more words
that are in your head, the less successful you will be.
I'm not talking about the concept of the piece, the
concept of pieces accompanied.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
By much o words.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
You know, why I'm doing something, why I'm attracted to
something I can give you, you know, versus important. I
can just go on forever. But in the moment of working,
the less words the better. I don't say I'm going
to paint a nose. Now, I say I'm going to
paint light and shape and space.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And you you become that, right, I get that, Yeah,
become that.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
If you're just tuning in.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
You're tuning in, you're listening to the poet Gold, and
I'm the poet Gold. And we're here today with Katherine Murphy,
a painter residing here in the Hudson and Gold.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Do you have any reaction because your art is inward right?
But are those words of translation of a kind of
wordless silence.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
And That's why I could totally relate to what she's saying,
because even though you're I may be writing the poem,
there there's that space in the poem where you just
are you just you know, the thinking stops and you
sort of more or less become the piece, and I
think that that's when the life of the piece be.
The poem is like that.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Absolutely, I feel very a kinch poetry.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I read a lot of poetry, and I always have
felt like if if you know, all the arts are separate,
but because Mormon content have to become one thing in
both poetry and and painting, I mean they have to
be inseparable, right for it to work?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah? Uh So, going back to the manly Hompkins reference,
the charge or the spiritual energy. You can put it
in more or less a pious language, but it's something
that is not a secular thing.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
It is a secular thing. Okay, I think I think it.
I don't think. I don't think that growing up Catholic,
I don't know if it did or not. I can't
separate that. But I think that this can happen because
I think this can happen. I think this can happen
in moments that have nothing to do with the pious.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yes, I mean, if if we mean religious ceremonial, I
know that. I mean Christianity itself is Jesus is God,
the creator of the world, becomes ordinary. I mean, there's
nothing more inconnate than that. So yeah, maybe I'm using
language is not helpful to you.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I think art itself is regardless of someone's sort of
speak religious belief. I believe art is a spiritual journey.
Sure you know, it comes from a place other than
something external. It's something I think that's that's soulful, that's
trying to come through us. And then we represent the
(12:33):
vessel that it happens to come through.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
And I also think that without belief, we wouldn't do
it at all. I mean, you know, belief is the
bedrock of all things that happen. The idea of being
able to believe that this is worth doing. It takes
some days, a great deal, tremendous belief, so good.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I've heard you use the word miracle frequently, and yes,
maybe you want could I.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Think I use it with with great I use it
far too much. I think pretty much everything is a miracle,
including my existence in my and I think that it's all.
But yes, I but I don't know what the word
miracle means quite. I mean I don't, I don't know
quite what it means. I'm using it like I would
(13:26):
use almost a curse, you know. I mean that that
that casually. But I think that making a painting, I
can only talk to painting. I think I think this
happens in all the arts because you have to make
a world, whether it be an abstract painter or a
figurative painting, you have to make a world that can
(13:51):
hold the viewers attention in a way that I kind
of a Cain. I kind of compared to watching two
darning needles fly and make up at the same time.
I mean, I don't know if you've watched darning needles
by the pond, Well, there's another word for darning needles.
(14:12):
You know that you know what they are. You know
what they are. They fly and they have very transparent wings,
and they procreates flying.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
In the air. And I always feel like painting is
that it's like that.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
For me.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
When I look at that, I go, that's how do
they figure that out? That's kind of a miracle. And
I feel that way about painting. So you know, I.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Get you.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Next you're sitting by a pond and you see that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I get it.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Absolute absolutely, But I guess when I use the word
secular before, what I meant is a non miraculous sensibility.
And I think that most most of our lives are
carried out in a way that is, we perceive as
non miraculous, and the miraculous part of existence comes as insight,
(15:25):
it comes as in flashes.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Sure, that's true.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, we might if I'm going to license myself thirty seconds.
My favorite Bible story is the Transfiguration, whereas Jesus goes
up on the mountain with Peter and Draymer through other guys,
and all of a sudden, this is right before he
is going to get crucified and whatnot. But all of
(15:50):
a sudden he's there, and he starts to glow his
he saws to shimmers close turn white, and he's shimmering.
And it scares the day, I said, guys, And they
go to the ground and they hide their faces, and
a big voice comes out of the sky. Is my
beloved son, And it's a big and when they put
(16:12):
their heads back up, it's just Jesus. And that to me,
what makes the world nobly miraculous is that happens into
all of us regularly. And I think that it does.
Many of us are trained to ignore it.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
That's true, to catch it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It's true. It's true. It's true. Is the to remind
you not. Yeah, absolutely, that was.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
That was.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
That was a great story.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Peter was and I was, I'm in here and I'm
watching Peter's body language. And for audience members who are
not here, I mean you were like in it.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
You know, I loved it.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
It was animated, it really was.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
It was. I was just like, I was like, wow,
I feel like story.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
That's true. I mean, that's true.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
It's true. Everything is a miracle. It's true.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, you know, I always looked at breath like a
miracle because it's one of the things.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
It's the thing that we.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Take for granted. Well, like I speak, taking for granted that, yeah,
I'm going to have the next breadth.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Yes, exactly right, exactly right, exactly right. My favorite Bible
story is that is always the Annunciation, which is because
there's been so many great paintings about it, and my
favorite one is Messina's and then Messina's painting. All it
is is the Virgin is a Bible in front of her,
is the ground behind her is like I think it's
(17:44):
a plain color, maybe it's whitish. And all it is
is the Virgin is look has looked up from the
Bible and she's put both of her hands up like this,
and that's it. That's Messina's annunciation, which makes the viewer Gabriel,
oh okay, yeah, and I love that's so brilliant. It's
(18:06):
so brilliant because that's all there is, and it's such
a modern idea of what the annunciation is. But it's
you know, don't enough and.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
When you say, when you say, your hands like.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
This, her hands are like this, which is.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Radio.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
And he's not. She's done look happy. She just looks like,
oh no, no, what and uh.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
You know, but really she's she's she's protecting herself from
him and in whatever's about to happen. And then but
you know that all that's that's all. It's between you,
the viewer, and the painting. And so you know, what
are you?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Then?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
What do you?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
What?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Is the viewer? Pretty cool?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And I might have the reference wrong in this, but
the renunciation picture comes to my mind. I frown angelical.
That's a beauty with a big angel. Yeah, I'm like you.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Get it, Oh yeah, often big, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
The message is big.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
It's very gonna be But in a celli the angel,
he's such a brilliant painter. You could really feel the
angel just landing, and it's such a beautiful painting.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I have it in my studio. I've had my studio
up in my studio for fifty years.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So how do you relate to the history of what
I mean? I know you taught a lot.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
You I taught painters. I didn't teach artistry, but I
just love painting. Since school, I studied art history. I
think all artists, all artists are my peers. I don't
you know, I'm painting. I'm painting for the guy down
the street. I'm painting for Matisa, I'm painting for Michaelangelo.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Do you do you need to create a have a
certain setting when you're painting. No.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
I work from observations. So sometimes I'm working outdoors. Sometimes
I work in my studio. Often I actually, at least
half the time, I actually have an idea, and I
actually set up the idea as a sculpture that the
and I paint. So I'm very adjustable. I've worked in
public parks with people talking to me. You know, I'm
(20:07):
pretty You get tough, Yeah, yeah, I had to. I've
painted many people watching television so that they would be
quiet and still so I am. I'm I'm very adjustable.
I can flip in.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to finding Out
with Pete and the poet Gold, and I'm the poet
Gold and we're here with Katherine Murphy, a painter that
resides here in the Hudson Valley and Katy.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
One of the things that non artists very often wondered,
how did they decide what to do? In my sense
is you don't have to go far to decide what
to do. You paint the most ordinary I do.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I just probably should to fill people in the kinds
of things you do. It's ordinary stuff around the house.
You know, the bed uh, you know the bed sheets.
Also stuff is not only ordinary, but from peculiar positions,
like I'm thinking of one of your paintings where they
are the see through curtains where they called diaphornous curtains
(21:14):
and they have diaphorus or see through curtains and then
cause out the window. This is like everybody else is
ignoring that.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Well, it's actually an accident at the window.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
If you if you see the painting in life, you
see the body is the body in the grind. I
miss that no, you need to see you need to
see it. In the photograph you really can't see that,
so you see the body. But I think that one
painting leads to another painting, and the paintings come out
of formality a lot of the times. In other words,
it is, it is. The idea is truly about what
(21:50):
the composition is going to be of the painting. I
did a painting called Blue Blanket, for instance, which was
from a dream, and I do many paintings that are
based on dreams. And in the.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Dream I was just doing this.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
I was just I was just flipping a blanket down
on the ground and I woke as the blanket was
hitting the ground, and I went, that's the painting, and
I knew it had to be a painting. So that
happens to me often. I will I will dream something
or half sleep a lot of a lot of half
sleep thinking. And so but one thing leads to another,
(22:27):
I mean really one one piece. If you followed my path,
you would see the linking and it is it is.
The framing is very important. My framing is of the
composition is very important because if it looked like a
(22:48):
painting that you know it's going to remind you of art.
If it doesn't, it might remind you of life, which
is something you forgot to look at. You the story,
that's the story necessarily. All paintings, all paintings, All paintings
are abstract. All paintings tell a story.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So the world is holy.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Well, sometimes.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Why do you take such peculiar difficult things to do?
I'd like to have an image we you're looking through
the curtain. I mean, that's very hard to do.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Everything is hard. I mean what's surprising is that you
would think something would be easy. That everything is hard,
and everything is easy. It all depends on the day,
It all depends on the light. In fact, I always
want things to be easy, and then I find out
that everything.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Is hard because I keep going, because I'm.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
A very slow painter, since I paint from observation, lots
of times it involves light. Sometimes I have to wait
for the light. It's not sunny for a week, it's
not cloudy for a week, and it's a real pain
in the butt. So I'm always trying to set up
things like, oh no, this one's going to be easy,
like oh, you have such a fool, and that nothing
turns out to be easy. It's all hard, really, And
(24:02):
and if if the words are gone and you're just
looking at what's in front of you, really everything's the same.
People are always saying, oh, the eyes are hard, the
noses hard, the eyes are hard, the mouth is hard,
the hair is hard or not.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
So you develop a or you may already have a
tremendous amount of patience.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
My Harry describes me as the least patient person in
the world, and I understand that to mean. I think
that people say that use patience in the wrong way.
Patience is for something you don't want to do.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
And I want to make point.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
I don't want to wait for the bus, but I
do want to make the painting anyway. And some days,
sometimes you know, people go, how do to you do
that for so long? Sometimes my heart is broken because
I know it's almost over, you know, Oh no, this
one was, this one, this one was. It was lovely,
So you know, sometimes I'm happy.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Though. There's another painting that I want to make sure.
I just mentioned of the garden hose actually is probably
a couple of garden.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
There are a couple of garden hoses, yes.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
And they were all tangled up and messed up and
very beautiful green colors with some yellow stripes, and then
off in the corner is an actual snake. You know,
snakes and hoses are cousins, but when you see the snake,
which is an animate thing, it's very different from the hose,
(25:30):
and the snake has all the efficiency in the world,
whereas the hoses human beings have been around. We messed
that up. Did you have a comment on how you
made the snake?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
How did I actually make the snake? Well, I went online.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
It's very it's your friend when it comes to looking
for props, and I found the person who supposedly mate,
you know, did sculptures of snakes, and they were like,
you get the sculpture of the plaster snake in the mail,
and it's doing this my assistant. Because I'm very frightened
of snakes, so I made my assistant paint the snake,
and I wanted to put it in the painting because
(26:07):
why did they put that yellow stripe on the host?
So you didn't you're doing more over with your more
and that's the snake has it for, so you don't
maybe snep on it. I don't know why he has it,
but yeah, I know so, and they just belong together
and really said it was painting about the host, and
I went, this needs a guarter snake.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
So that's where it came from.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
And there's another thing, and I'm going to use the
word secular, would even profane in this ordinary way, because
we have certain commonality around the sacred here. But there's
also something that I'm very fond of, and that's money. Money.
I'm very fond of it, and you know, I don't
(26:53):
think it should be our primary motivated but there are
people in the world who are willing to pay a
great deal of money for your painting. And how do
you feel about the relationship between art and money? Very
few people have that problem.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, I paint what I want. I don't.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
I don't I don't think about will the sell with
so because I have no idea. There's some paintings I
think are impossible. There's some paintings I think, well, people
don't like this, people don't like them, people like the
other paintings that are impossible. I never know how it's
going to go. I think I work very hard. I'm
very happy to accept their money, but I don't I
(27:32):
can't calculate it. And so I sometimes it's rough and
sometimes it's not. And I but I don't I think
that it's better than working for you know, like artists
have always depended on someone the pope for a long time,
and and patrons, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I mean, this is sheer capitalism. And I don't. I
mean many people have conversation about what is a painting worth?
Speaker 4 (28:01):
What is this worth? Is this worth anything? A painting
is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.
I have had I do about two paintings a year.
I've had many dealers say I'd like you get to
get up to the level of a plumber, and I
would to. So, you know, that's pretty much.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It seems like a lot of money. It is a
lot of money. But on the other hand, factor in
two years work.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, I'm going to say that when you calculate exactly
the labor of love that one puts in out of
the work.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
But I think I'm very lucky.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
And I don't know. I didn't know that i'd ever
make a penny, and I didn't go in. I didn't
It was the sixties. We weren't even supposed to make
a Penny, so it was easier for teacher.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I know you totally Yale in the painting school.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
I taught graduate painting at Yale for twenty three years,
but in a very limited basis. Okay, it wasn't like
I mean, Harry had tenure at faster, but I taught
one semester year once every other week, and then I
did final critique, which is a big deal and last
for days.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And the critique what does that mean? I mean I
saw a little clip of it seemed to me that
you were coaching more than teaching.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Well, certainly when I studio visits are are coaching and criticism,
but critique is not too much coaching, mostly criticism, and
I do it with other people.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
So it's a it's a pile on. Yeah, it's very
it's very hard. It's very hard.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
But you want to be part of the conversation. If
you want to be part of the conversation, you got
to take the good with the band.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Well, we really appreciate you going through the whole thing,
from absolutely the sacred to profane.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And a what a great, great week in having both
you and Harry here. Pa sure you know for this
for this show, So thank you so much Catherine for
being on today. Thank you to our listeners of finding
out with Pete and the poet God. Then we appreciate
you and we always like it when you show up.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Amen,
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's staff management or ownership.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
A good morning, you'll find out with Pete and the
poet Cold, I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold, and.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We're on the air this morning with Katherine Murphy, a painter.
And before we get to Catherine in her decades of
brilliant work, we're going to go right to the poet
Coal for a weekly poem prayer incantation, Gold, please let
it roll.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Well, here's a nice little small one for you, the
titled Sunflower Summer sun Lingers, Winter Blues in the distance,
Wilting not allowed.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Wilting not allowed. I'm out of luck. That is a
nice short poem, you know, looking at some of the
thing comments made about you, people often refer to you
as a realist painter. What do they mean by that?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I don't refer to myself that way because I'm still
working on the word real which I finds be extremely
difficult to define. I call myself a representational painter because
I generally paint things that you can recognize, and so
I and I think the idea of realism, what does
it mean? When I was looking at your work, Pochett
(01:17):
with me a book, and one of the things some
of the paintings struck out at me as being almost
like a photograph. You know, Yeah, well, I work from observation.
I don't work in photographs. You were looking at a photograph,
so that's why it looked like a photograph. I think
the paintings themselves pretty much are usually larger than life size.
(01:40):
You pretty much know it's not a photograph, and there's
air and light, and really, what I do is I
translate three dimensions into two dimensions. So photographs are paint
from a photograph, you're translating two dimensions into two dimensions.
So I want them to be something other than a photograph.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
And they're a cousin to a photograph in the sense
that they're representational, but they're not accusin to the photograph
in the sense that it's really filtered through and through
you and back out to the world.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Yes, and I really think that with a photograph you're
seeing time in a very particular and prescribed way. But
when you're actually working from life, you see time and
space in a you're always adjusting. You're always adjusting for
what you're interested in and what you define more important
and what you feel like you need to know, so
(02:38):
that you're always adjusting. Time really makes a painting look
different from photograph when you see it as a painting,
But of course it's akin to photographs. I mean, you know,
the whole of our century and before are very influenced
by photography and by framing. And one of the thing
(03:00):
I find most interesting is in the i'll say seventeenth century,
nobody framed. Only artists framed, and only painters and people
who were drawing framed. Now everybody frames, every kid with
a phone, everybody's taking photographs all the time. It's become
(03:20):
a language. The idea of framing and deciding to frame
what's important has become an obsession for generations.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
To say what's important? I mean another way you might
put that is what to bless? Right?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Well, what I want you to recognize? Do you know
the work of Alice McDermott, the writer Alice McDermott. Oh,
she's fantastic. You should reader New Yorker. Very interesting woman. Yeah,
since she you would love them. I swear they're really
beautiful books. And she was talking about praying and believing
(04:02):
and what she believed in and what how what her
work and because she's a writer, what what relationship her
work has to something sacred? And she said, and I'm
going to paraphrase her very badly, and I but I
think she would understand is what she believed in that
is that there was an energy in everything and her
(04:27):
she was blessed to be able to make that energy visible.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And that's what I think making paintings is.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I think she's she said, make you know, to describe
the energy with words, but I always just think that
I'm making the energy visible.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I was going to point that out a little earlier,
sort of like looking at dimensions. I think I think
a painter might see that energy or that dimension differently
than a photographer would would see something.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Well, you know that something else is going to be involved.
A photographer can do it very quick and I think
it is a different relationship because I mean, I'm negotiating
reality every second of every day, you know, because I'm
I'm translating it from one thing to another. But a
photographer is doing that as well, but very quickly. And
it's all one thing. But it's it's it's an interesting dilemma.
(05:23):
I mean I really started doing making these paintings in
a world where there is our photographs to do something
quickly because I wanted to slow looking down. I just
wanted to make it slower. And when you're look at
my panties, even if you hate them, I generally slow
people down.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So the Alice mcsermat reference is interesting. My mother's maide
name was mccermat. No insane, your name is Murphy something.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Is my mother's name? Made name is O'Reilly?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Okay? So an Irish indeed, there's an Irish Catholic vibe. Yes. Yes.
And one of the things that I'm uh, the way
I see your work is in what you know I
used to call particularity. I mean I see the particular
thing and you know in uh the tradition that that
(06:19):
comes out of in terms of Catholicism, I guess the
I San Francis ASSISI was the one who really could
see the individual mouse to see the individual treaty and
you know it gets developed intellectually through dun Scotus and
uh whatnot? And what when I say whatnot? As a
post that's Thomas Aquinas. But the particularity has its full blooming.
(06:43):
I think in the poetry are on Manly Hopkins, who
has a poem called God's Grandeur, and the opening line
is and I think it's relevant to your work specifically.
I've thought this before, but the opening line is the
world is charged with the great of God. In charge
means every single thing. It's not some trees have it,
(07:06):
some trees don't. The world is charge.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
And things that you painters call it the moment of recognition,
and it's it's like, you know, you can go past
something a thousand times and then all of a sudden
it becomes something important for you to look at. And
I think that can happen with anything. It's like, uh,
there's you know, there's two ways to think about criticism.
(07:30):
The German critical tradition is you you you, you contemplate
and you think about the things that are worth thinking about.
And the French is anything, I will think about all
of it. I will think about criticism as I will.
I will analyze anything that comes my way, which is
(07:51):
very different, which is a very different mindset. But I'm
I'm I'm with the French in that one.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Okay, and yet it is something gold up there different
words and not words. I heard you. I mentioned that
when you paint, you're at its best, it's in a
wordless place, and wordlessness is non essentially a human place.
(08:18):
It's almost a divine place. So that you have any
comments on the experience of that or how.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
You get there, absolutely, And I know how, not how
I get there.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
But how.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I had a moment when I was very young. I
was not taught by people who painted representationally. I was
taught by abstract expressionists. And I was painting. I was
home in Massachusetts, and I was painting a suburban street,
and I was painting trees that were probably about half
(08:51):
a mile away, and they were way in the distance.
And although I couldn't feel it on my skin, a
breeze blue in the trees, and the breeze blew through
my body, and I knew that, in you know, fifteen hundreds,
I would have become a nun immediately, because it was
totally a moment of the sublime, and it certainly was
(09:16):
not accompanied by words. And I always think about painting,
and I always think about painting, particularly from life. It
is entirely abstract, and in that abstraction. The more words
that are in your head, the less successful you will be.
I'm not talking about the concept of the piece, the
concept of pieces accompanied.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
By much o words.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
You know, why I'm doing something, why I'm attracted to
something I can give you, you know, versus important. I
can just go on forever. But in the moment of working,
the less words the better. I don't say I'm going
to paint a nose. Now, I say I'm going to
paint light and shape and space.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And you you become that, right, I get that, Yeah,
become that.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
If you're just tuning in.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
You're tuning in, you're listening to the poet Gold, and
I'm the poet Gold. And we're here today with Katherine Murphy,
a painter residing here in the Hudson and Gold.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Do you have any reaction because your art is inward right?
But are those words of translation of a kind of
wordless silence.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
And That's why I could totally relate to what she's saying,
because even though you're I may be writing the poem,
there there's that space in the poem where you just
are you just you know, the thinking stops and you
sort of more or less become the piece, and I
think that that's when the life of the piece be.
The poem is like that.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Absolutely, I feel very a kinch poetry.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I read a lot of poetry, and I always have
felt like if if you know, all the arts are separate,
but because Mormon content have to become one thing in
both poetry and and painting, I mean they have to
be inseparable, right for it to work?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah? Uh So, going back to the manly Hompkins reference,
the charge or the spiritual energy. You can put it
in more or less a pious language, but it's something
that is not a secular thing.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
It is a secular thing. Okay, I think I think it.
I don't think. I don't think that growing up Catholic,
I don't know if it did or not. I can't
separate that. But I think that this can happen because
I think this can happen. I think this can happen
in moments that have nothing to do with the pious.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yes, I mean, if if we mean religious ceremonial, I
know that. I mean Christianity itself is Jesus is God,
the creator of the world, becomes ordinary. I mean, there's
nothing more inconnate than that. So yeah, maybe I'm using
language is not helpful to you.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I think art itself is regardless of someone's sort of
speak religious belief. I believe art is a spiritual journey.
Sure you know, it comes from a place other than
something external. It's something I think that's that's soulful, that's
trying to come through us. And then we represent the
(12:33):
vessel that it happens to come through.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
And I also think that without belief, we wouldn't do
it at all. I mean, you know, belief is the
bedrock of all things that happen. The idea of being
able to believe that this is worth doing. It takes
some days, a great deal, tremendous belief, so good.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I've heard you use the word miracle frequently, and yes,
maybe you want could I.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Think I use it with with great I use it
far too much. I think pretty much everything is a miracle,
including my existence in my and I think that it's all.
But yes, I but I don't know what the word
miracle means quite. I mean I don't, I don't know
quite what it means. I'm using it like I would
(13:26):
use almost a curse, you know. I mean that that
that casually. But I think that making a painting, I
can only talk to painting. I think I think this
happens in all the arts because you have to make
a world, whether it be an abstract painter or a
figurative painting, you have to make a world that can
(13:51):
hold the viewers attention in a way that I kind
of a Cain. I kind of compared to watching two
darning needles fly and make up at the same time.
I mean, I don't know if you've watched darning needles
by the pond, Well, there's another word for darning needles.
(14:12):
You know that you know what they are. You know
what they are. They fly and they have very transparent wings,
and they procreates flying.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
In the air. And I always feel like painting is
that it's like that.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
For me.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
When I look at that, I go, that's how do
they figure that out? That's kind of a miracle. And
I feel that way about painting. So you know, I.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Get you.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Next you're sitting by a pond and you see that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I get it.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Absolute absolutely, But I guess when I use the word
secular before, what I meant is a non miraculous sensibility.
And I think that most most of our lives are
carried out in a way that is, we perceive as
non miraculous, and the miraculous part of existence comes as insight,
(15:25):
it comes as in flashes.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Sure, that's true.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, we might if I'm going to license myself thirty seconds.
My favorite Bible story is the Transfiguration, whereas Jesus goes
up on the mountain with Peter and Draymer through other guys,
and all of a sudden, this is right before he
is going to get crucified and whatnot. But all of
(15:50):
a sudden he's there, and he starts to glow his
he saws to shimmers close turn white, and he's shimmering.
And it scares the day, I said, guys, And they
go to the ground and they hide their faces, and
a big voice comes out of the sky. Is my
beloved son, And it's a big and when they put
(16:12):
their heads back up, it's just Jesus. And that to me,
what makes the world nobly miraculous is that happens into
all of us regularly. And I think that it does.
Many of us are trained to ignore it.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
That's true, to catch it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It's true. It's true. It's true. Is the to remind
you not. Yeah, absolutely, that was.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
That was.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
That was a great story.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Peter was and I was, I'm in here and I'm
watching Peter's body language. And for audience members who are
not here, I mean you were like in it.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
You know, I loved it.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
It was animated, it really was.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
It was. I was just like, I was like, wow,
I feel like story.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
That's true. I mean, that's true.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
It's true. Everything is a miracle. It's true.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, you know, I always looked at breath like a
miracle because it's one of the things.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
It's the thing that we.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Take for granted. Well, like I speak, taking for granted that, yeah,
I'm going to have the next breadth.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Yes, exactly right, exactly right, exactly right. My favorite Bible
story is that is always the Annunciation, which is because
there's been so many great paintings about it, and my
favorite one is Messina's and then Messina's painting. All it
is is the Virgin is a Bible in front of her,
is the ground behind her is like I think it's
(17:44):
a plain color, maybe it's whitish. And all it is
is the Virgin is look has looked up from the
Bible and she's put both of her hands up like this,
and that's it. That's Messina's annunciation, which makes the viewer Gabriel,
oh okay, yeah, and I love that's so brilliant. It's
(18:06):
so brilliant because that's all there is, and it's such
a modern idea of what the annunciation is. But it's
you know, don't enough and.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
When you say, when you say, your hands like.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
This, her hands are like this, which is.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Radio.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
And he's not. She's done look happy. She just looks like,
oh no, no, what and uh.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
You know, but really she's she's she's protecting herself from
him and in whatever's about to happen. And then but
you know that all that's that's all. It's between you,
the viewer, and the painting. And so you know, what
are you?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Then?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
What do you?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
What?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Is the viewer? Pretty cool?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And I might have the reference wrong in this, but
the renunciation picture comes to my mind. I frown angelical.
That's a beauty with a big angel. Yeah, I'm like you.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Get it, Oh yeah, often big, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
The message is big.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
It's very gonna be But in a celli the angel,
he's such a brilliant painter. You could really feel the
angel just landing, and it's such a beautiful painting.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I have it in my studio. I've had my studio
up in my studio for fifty years.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So how do you relate to the history of what
I mean? I know you taught a lot.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
You I taught painters. I didn't teach artistry, but I
just love painting. Since school, I studied art history. I
think all artists, all artists are my peers. I don't
you know, I'm painting. I'm painting for the guy down
the street. I'm painting for Matisa, I'm painting for Michaelangelo.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Do you do you need to create a have a
certain setting when you're painting. No.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
I work from observations. So sometimes I'm working outdoors. Sometimes
I work in my studio. Often I actually, at least
half the time, I actually have an idea, and I
actually set up the idea as a sculpture that the
and I paint. So I'm very adjustable. I've worked in
public parks with people talking to me. You know, I'm
(20:07):
pretty You get tough, Yeah, yeah, I had to. I've
painted many people watching television so that they would be
quiet and still so I am. I'm I'm very adjustable.
I can flip in.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to finding Out
with Pete and the poet Gold, and I'm the poet
Gold and we're here with Katherine Murphy, a painter that
resides here in the Hudson Valley and Katy.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
One of the things that non artists very often wondered,
how did they decide what to do? In my sense
is you don't have to go far to decide what
to do. You paint the most ordinary I do.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I just probably should to fill people in the kinds
of things you do. It's ordinary stuff around the house.
You know, the bed uh, you know the bed sheets.
Also stuff is not only ordinary, but from peculiar positions,
like I'm thinking of one of your paintings where they
are the see through curtains where they called diaphornous curtains
(21:14):
and they have diaphorus or see through curtains and then
cause out the window. This is like everybody else is
ignoring that.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Well, it's actually an accident at the window.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
If you if you see the painting in life, you
see the body is the body in the grind. I
miss that no, you need to see you need to
see it. In the photograph you really can't see that,
so you see the body. But I think that one
painting leads to another painting, and the paintings come out
of formality a lot of the times. In other words,
it is, it is. The idea is truly about what
(21:50):
the composition is going to be of the painting. I
did a painting called Blue Blanket, for instance, which was
from a dream, and I do many paintings that are
based on dreams. And in the.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Dream I was just doing this.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
I was just I was just flipping a blanket down
on the ground and I woke as the blanket was
hitting the ground, and I went, that's the painting, and
I knew it had to be a painting. So that
happens to me often. I will I will dream something
or half sleep a lot of a lot of half
sleep thinking. And so but one thing leads to another,
(22:27):
I mean really one one piece. If you followed my path,
you would see the linking and it is it is.
The framing is very important. My framing is of the
composition is very important because if it looked like a
(22:48):
painting that you know it's going to remind you of art.
If it doesn't, it might remind you of life, which
is something you forgot to look at. You the story,
that's the story necessarily. All paintings, all paintings, All paintings
are abstract. All paintings tell a story.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So the world is holy.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Well, sometimes.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Why do you take such peculiar difficult things to do?
I'd like to have an image we you're looking through
the curtain. I mean, that's very hard to do.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Everything is hard. I mean what's surprising is that you
would think something would be easy. That everything is hard,
and everything is easy. It all depends on the day,
It all depends on the light. In fact, I always
want things to be easy, and then I find out
that everything.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Is hard because I keep going, because I'm.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
A very slow painter, since I paint from observation, lots
of times it involves light. Sometimes I have to wait
for the light. It's not sunny for a week, it's
not cloudy for a week, and it's a real pain
in the butt. So I'm always trying to set up
things like, oh no, this one's going to be easy,
like oh, you have such a fool, and that nothing
turns out to be easy. It's all hard, really, And
(24:02):
and if if the words are gone and you're just
looking at what's in front of you, really everything's the same.
People are always saying, oh, the eyes are hard, the
noses hard, the eyes are hard, the mouth is hard,
the hair is hard or not.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
So you develop a or you may already have a
tremendous amount of patience.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
My Harry describes me as the least patient person in
the world, and I understand that to mean. I think
that people say that use patience in the wrong way.
Patience is for something you don't want to do.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
And I want to make point.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
I don't want to wait for the bus, but I
do want to make the painting anyway. And some days,
sometimes you know, people go, how do to you do
that for so long? Sometimes my heart is broken because
I know it's almost over, you know, Oh no, this
one was, this one, this one was. It was lovely,
So you know, sometimes I'm happy.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Though. There's another painting that I want to make sure.
I just mentioned of the garden hose actually is probably
a couple of garden.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
There are a couple of garden hoses, yes.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
And they were all tangled up and messed up and
very beautiful green colors with some yellow stripes, and then
off in the corner is an actual snake. You know,
snakes and hoses are cousins, but when you see the snake,
which is an animate thing, it's very different from the hose,
(25:30):
and the snake has all the efficiency in the world,
whereas the hoses human beings have been around. We messed
that up. Did you have a comment on how you
made the snake?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
How did I actually make the snake? Well, I went online.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
It's very it's your friend when it comes to looking
for props, and I found the person who supposedly mate,
you know, did sculptures of snakes, and they were like,
you get the sculpture of the plaster snake in the mail,
and it's doing this my assistant. Because I'm very frightened
of snakes, so I made my assistant paint the snake,
and I wanted to put it in the painting because
(26:07):
why did they put that yellow stripe on the host?
So you didn't you're doing more over with your more
and that's the snake has it for, so you don't
maybe snep on it. I don't know why he has it,
but yeah, I know so, and they just belong together
and really said it was painting about the host, and
I went, this needs a guarter snake.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
So that's where it came from.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
And there's another thing, and I'm going to use the
word secular, would even profane in this ordinary way, because
we have certain commonality around the sacred here. But there's
also something that I'm very fond of, and that's money. Money.
I'm very fond of it, and you know, I don't
(26:53):
think it should be our primary motivated but there are
people in the world who are willing to pay a
great deal of money for your painting. And how do
you feel about the relationship between art and money? Very
few people have that problem.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, I paint what I want. I don't.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
I don't I don't think about will the sell with
so because I have no idea. There's some paintings I
think are impossible. There's some paintings I think, well, people
don't like this, people don't like them, people like the
other paintings that are impossible. I never know how it's
going to go. I think I work very hard. I'm
very happy to accept their money, but I don't I
(27:32):
can't calculate it. And so I sometimes it's rough and
sometimes it's not. And I but I don't I think
that it's better than working for you know, like artists
have always depended on someone the pope for a long time,
and and patrons, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I mean, this is sheer capitalism. And I don't. I
mean many people have conversation about what is a painting worth?
Speaker 4 (28:01):
What is this worth? Is this worth anything? A painting
is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.
I have had I do about two paintings a year.
I've had many dealers say I'd like you get to
get up to the level of a plumber, and I
would to. So, you know, that's pretty much.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It seems like a lot of money. It is a
lot of money. But on the other hand, factor in
two years work.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, I'm going to say that when you calculate exactly
the labor of love that one puts in out of
the work.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
But I think I'm very lucky.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
And I don't know. I didn't know that i'd ever
make a penny, and I didn't go in. I didn't
It was the sixties. We weren't even supposed to make
a Penny, so it was easier for teacher.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I know you totally Yale in the painting school.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
I taught graduate painting at Yale for twenty three years,
but in a very limited basis. Okay, it wasn't like
I mean, Harry had tenure at faster, but I taught
one semester year once every other week, and then I
did final critique, which is a big deal and last
for days.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And the critique what does that mean? I mean I
saw a little clip of it seemed to me that
you were coaching more than teaching.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Well, certainly when I studio visits are are coaching and criticism,
but critique is not too much coaching, mostly criticism, and
I do it with other people.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
So it's a it's a pile on. Yeah, it's very
it's very hard. It's very hard.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
But you want to be part of the conversation. If
you want to be part of the conversation, you got
to take the good with the band.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Well, we really appreciate you going through the whole thing,
from absolutely the sacred to profane.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And a what a great, great week in having both
you and Harry here. Pa sure you know for this
for this show, So thank you so much Catherine for
being on today. Thank you to our listeners of finding
out with Pete and the poet God. Then we appreciate
you and we always like it when you show up.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Amen,
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