BIO
Maureen Murray (b. Providence, Rhode Island, United States) creates abstract paintings of the coastal ecosystems where New England forests meet the Atlantic Ocean, influenced by her native rural Rhode Island. She works primarily in translucent layered oil, recently on linen. She holds a BA from Connecticut College in New London, CT, where she studied with Barkley Hendricks, and an MAT from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. She was a monitor (studio assistant) in Rudolf Baranik's advanced critique seminar at the Art Students League of New York.
Murray received a Juror's Award in the American Drawing Biennial at Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA, juried by May Stevens. Her solo exhibition New Works was presented at Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation, Wakefield, RI, sponsored in part by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Murray also created the characters, artwork, and story for the animated short film On the Moon for Nick Jr. in New York, NY, which screened at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, Chicago, IL, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music BAMkids Film Festival, Brooklyn, NY, and was later broadcast on Plum TV, New York, NY.
Murray's recent exhibitions include SVACE Project Space, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY; the International Society for Performing and Visual Arts, Chicago, IL; and Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, among others. She is a 2026 virtual resident with Pollinator, New York, NY, by nomination, and a member of the ArtEO R&D Community, London, UK.
Murray paints from a historic boathouse studio on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut.
STATEMENT
I inhabit the coastal ecosystems where New England forests meet the Atlantic Ocean. My paintings document what sustained observation reveals: familiar environments becoming unfamiliar as ecological systems destabilize.
I paint observable climate phenomena through lyrical abstraction. Translucent layers accumulate into form, mirroring how environmental transformation manifests—gradual, cumulative, and undeniable. These paintings refuse smoothness: climate transformation is not frictionless. Forms resist solidification, surfaces fragment, creating an aesthetic experience that demands engagement rather than offering comfort.
Recent work includes a series documenting seasonal desynchronization: wildflowers blooming at the wrong time, frozen by unseasonable snow, encased in ice. Larger paintings render familiar coves and woodland edges as elegiac visions at moments of disappearance—forms emerging and dissolving simultaneously.
While working on climate communication, I recognized the gap between what climate science revealed and what existing visual languages could convey. My response was to create aesthetic experiences of transformation that bypass rational defensiveness. What does climate change feel like? How do we apprehend disappearance while it's happening?
Decades of lived experience in these environments created the foundation for recognizing their transformation. My paintings make the familiar strange enough that we must contend with it anew.
These paintings document what's happening in coastal New England—global patterns manifesting locally, creating felt experience rather than rational argument. This is aesthetic practice generating knowledge that conventional documentation cannot access.
