I paint from imagination, even though the final image always resembles the “real” world in a
general way. For me a painting always begins from inside, an intuition of how simple motifs like trees or a repeated pattern of railroad ties might be distilled into something fresh, working with abstract and representational elements at the same time. A freight car is an efficient conveyor of goods, but also an interesting arrangement of shapes and colors, something with a potential for visual poetry. As Morandi said, “There is nothing more surreal and abstract than reality.”
An artist’s poetic insight is developed mostly by working, but also by looking at other art, and by
staying with the question: what is it that only painting can do, or that painting does best? In a
sense all painting is still life—silent, but alive on its own terms.
Publications
Myers, Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide, Orbis Press, 2009.
Myers et al, “Walter Tandy Murch: Paintings and Drawings 1925—1967,” Rizzoli, Sept 2021
Catalogs
“Passages,” catalog for solo exhibition at Yvette Torres Fine Arts, Rockland, 2012.
“Alumni Drawings,” Boston University, 1995.
“Sixty American Paintings,” catalog, Kennedy Galleries, April 1980.
“Four Figurative Painters,” catalog, Fitchburg Art Museum, 1975.
“Three Object Painters,” catalog, Lamont Gallery, April 1971.