Christopher Murphy spent his youth building elaborate miniature dioramas and scale models, and the restless attention to detail required for those pursuits translates to his meticulous realist oil paintings and drawings. Murphy’s subjects range from portraits to cityscapes to the occasional apocalyptic landscape, with themes of isolation, stillness, and a dark wit lending a disquieting oddness to them all. Murphy builds paintings in layered oils, allowing each layer to dry completely before applying another, with no mixing of wet paint on the canvas. Because this process is slow and labor intensive, he works from photographic reference, often employing found materials from family albums and estate sales. New realities are created by dramatically restaging the action or stillness, recontextualizing figures, or inventing scenarios only hinted at in the source materials.

Christopher Murphy was born April 19, 1977, and grew up in Irvine, California. He attended Art Center College of Design, where he graduated with a BFA and the highest honor of distinction. His earliest and most lasting influences are the painters Lucien Freud, Antonio López García, and Robert Bechtle. He was selected as the New American Paintings Reader’s Choice Winner for 2012. He has been represented by Lora Schlesinger Gallery since 2002.