Tradition Goes On: To The Studio at JJ Murphy Gallery by Anna Shukeylo
“Liam Murphy-Torres draws inspiration from the everyday buzz of New York City life, drawing from the everyday scenes unfolding around him…There is a subtle kinship with the work of contemporary painter Salman Toor. Murphy-Torres’s work allows a similar type of awkwardness to subjugate his figures, which translates into a magnetic energy within the paintings. His paintings are flagrantly sincere and truthful. He tells a story of what is around him and how he feels about the subject.”
A Dirty Arcadia, Catalog Essay by Olivia Hiester
“For Liam Murphy-Torres, virtue is a question of attention, not content. His paintings, drawn forth from his lived experience, recall familiar scenes from ordinary life: people walk their dogs, sit in cafes, ride bicycles, smoke cigarettes. These passages from daily life are not itemized or described photographically: there are heads without faces, hands without fingers, trees without their individual leaves. Instead they are distilled to their essential character by painterly means of shape, line, and color, and arranged in pursuit of visual resonance and order.”