Woodbury Artist To Be Celebrated
by Amy Mulvihill, Litchfield County Times
WOODBURY -- The late Woodbury artist Virginia Murray lived a rich life filled with adventure and devotion to her craft, and the results are being lovingly displayed beginning Sunday in an exhibit at chef Carole Peck's Good News Cafe.
The exhibition, which will have its opening reception Sunday, June 25, from 3 to 5 p.m., is entitled "Virginia Murray (1916-2005), Retrospective: A Life in Paint and Clay." It will run through Sept. 4.
The show will incorporate pieces from Mrs. Murray's prolific and varied 70-year career, which saw the mother of six explore a variety of media and influences as she followed her muse from oil painting to silk-screening and ceramics.
Mrs. Murray's children, all of whom are planning to attend Sunday's reception, remember their mother as dedicated, disciplined and driven by a sense of discovery in her life and, subsequently, by her work.
Born in New York City as Virginia Wallace, Mrs. Murray came to art early and never left.
Beginning at age 18 and continuing for five years, she attended Art Students League in New York City. When she married architect Gardner Andrew Murray and began having children, she stayed home to raise them, as was customary at the time.
Still, her daughter, Woodbury resident Joan Anthony, remembers her mother always carving out time during the day to paint.
"She was just very, very devoted to her art," Ms. Anthony recalled in a recent phone conversation. "She never worked outside the home, but she would spend at least an hour a day in the studio. She was very faithful about spending that time in her studio -- maybe when the kids were napping or something."
Ms. Anthony said she never minded the time her mother devoted to her art, but instead found it inspiring to witness her mother work so diligently at something she loved.
"I was very happy that she loved what she was doing and was successful at what she was doing. I got a real satisfaction out of that," Ms Anthony said.
Once Ms. Anthony and her brothers and sisters grew older, they also reaped the benefits of their mother's creative spirit.
"She loved to travel," Ms. Anthony said of her mother, whose parents had owned a weekend home in Washington, "and once we got a little bit older, we all went with her."
"Not all of us, maybe just one or two at a time," she clarified with a laugh.
Mrs. Murray's journeys took her, and her children, around the globe many times.
"She went to Ireland, Morocco, Russia, China, Italy, Peru and Southeast Asia (Thailand and Indonesia)," Ms. Anthony recalled.
Mrs. Murray's son Stephen, a co-owner of Murray Brothers Garage in Woodbury, remembered the effect these trips had on his mother and her art, saying, "When she went on trips, she always brought a sketch pad and took her own photographs to bring home, and she would use what she saw on trips. That influenced her work a lot."
Ms. Anthony agreed, remembering that her mother "would get very inspired and sketch outside the hotel window."
Ms. Anthony also recounted how her mother used to tell a story about climbing into a small fishing boat in Portugal and beginning to sketch, only to have a couple of young Portuguese boys climb in the boat with her, where they patiently observed her sketching process while occasionally handing her a brush or pencil from her reserve of instruments.
"From Islamic writing to Thai spirit houses, she had a real openness to other cultures," Ms. Anthony remarked.
That openness extended to artistic formats as well.
As Mr. Murray remembers it, his mother was constantly learning about new techniques and methods to apply to her art.
"She worked in oils, watercolors, silk-screening, prints and did handmade paper work," Mr. Murray said, recalling that she learned many new techniques through courses at the Brookfield Craft Center.
Toward the end of her life, Mrs. Murray's work underwent a seismic shift as she refocused her energies away from painting and into ceramic work.
"She really loved that because she could combine painting and sculpture," he explained.
Many of Mrs. Murray's ceramic pieces, as well as a selection of her paintings and silk-screens, will be on display at the Good News Cafe.
Ms. Anthony said Ms. Peck and her husband Bernard Jarrier approached the family about putting on a retrospective of their mother's work a few months ago. Since then, family members have been going through their own personal collections and soliciting loans from other collectors and institutions in possession of their mother's work for the show.
"We had to take some stuff away because we had too much. We filled the place," Mr. Murray chuckled.
The show will also feature a book Ms. Anthony and her two sisters wrote about their mother.
Entitled "Virginia Wallace Murray, HerLife and Work in Paint and Clay," the spiral-bound tome contains biographical information and reproductions of most of her work.
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