Artist Database

Michael Vincent Murphy emigrated to South Africa in 1950 and worked in commercial art from 1961 until 1983. Following a year of formal study at the Port Elizabeth School of Art and Design in 1984, he began painting full time. He relocated to Perth, Australia in 1999 and now lives and works in Mandurah, south of Perth.

Primarily working with realism, Murphy produces still lifes, landscapes and surreal compositions that frequently merge genres. His paintings are largely imagined, constructed from invented objects and settings, with light, composition and atmosphere as central preoccupations. The result is a body of work that extends the conventions of still life, landscape and figurative painting into quieter, more contemplative territory.