Patrick Murphy’s work is concerned with creating a dialogue with our surroundings, through figurative paintings and digital works.

Murphy’s paintings are involved and sometimes highly detailed. Large areas of flat colour are interrupted with detailed silhouettes of objects or views. This representational style of painting has seen him explore varied subject matter from everyday objects and scenes, to a series called ‘Branch’. In this series, thickly painted monochrome canvases concern themselves with edited views of tree structures. This highly figurative subject matter is a catalyst to the artist’s interests of surface, structure and colour. A common approach in his work is to start with a familiar subject - a tree, a bird, a street light - and, without actually distorting it, alter it in such a way that you lose sense of the original subject, noticing instead the application of paint and surface texture.

Murphy’s digital work is primarily concerned with manipulating the use of digital technology in the creation of new forms and scenes that cannot be achieved by painting. A direct comparison can be made with conventional physical mark making, but in this instance all forms are created inside the lens of the camera using a direct light source or objects moving in front of the camera.