American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1958–62) and at Mills College, Oakland, CA (1962–4). As a student she was influenced by many painters, ranging from Cézanne to Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1967 Murray moved to New York and first exhibited in 1971 in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition. Her first mature works included Children Meeting (oil on canvas, 2.56×3.22 m, 1978; New York, Whitney), and they evoke human characteristics, personalities or pure feeling through an interaction of non-figurative shapes, colour and lines. Murray is particularly well known for her shaped canvases, which date from 1976, on to which are painted both figurative and non-figurative elements: Sail Baby (1983; Minneapolis, MN, Walker A. Cent.) is effectively a collage of the image of a brightly painted yellow cup together with three biomorphic, interlocking canvases. The perceptual play of image and constructed object/ground is characteristic of Murray’s highly inventive and personal visual language.
From Grove Art Online
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