Oral history interview with Catherine Murphy

Scope and Contents

An interview of Catherine Murphy, conducted 2017 March 21 and 23, by James McElhinney, for the Archives of American Art at Murphy's home in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Scope and Contents

Murphy discusses growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts; her experience attending Pratt; her first exhibitions with the First Street Gallery; her review by Scott Burton in Art in America, joining Donald Droll gallery; her relationship with dealer Xavier Fourcade; her working process, sketching to canvas and her palette; her husband Harry Roseman and their relationship to Joseph Cornell; her reflections on the art world(s), her recollections of the Educational Alliance and representations painters and arguments about form, her experiences joining a cooperative gallery; showing in the Whitney Annual; she recalls Lexington, Massachusetts and early paintings of her backyard; she discusses joining the American Academy of Arts and Letters; she discusses class and mannerisms of representational painters; she describes her relationship to the art market; she discusses her approach to teaching at Yale and her ongoing relationship to teaching, she describes the use of form and geometry in her work. Murphy also recalls Xavier Fourcade, Yvonne Ranier, Rudy Burkhardt, Lois Dodd, Marcia Tucker, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Michael Mazur, Rackstraw Downes, Philip Pearlstein, Fairfield Porter, John Walker, Jack Tworkov, Winifred Lutz, Gretna Campbell, Al Held, among others.

Biographical / Historical

Interviewee Catherine Murphy (1946- ) is a painter in Poughkeepsie, New York. Interviewer James McElhinney (1952- ) is a painter and educator of New York, New York.