Artist, Elizabeth Murray: It's a table with the legs coming out and then actually having the shape be the image—I hadn't really done that before.
Curator, Mia Matthias: We're looking at Elizabeth Murray's depiction of a table and chairs, and beyond are the visible corners of a room. There are several canvases atop one another, and for the first time, the shape of the canvas is depicting the object. The image and the form are working in tandem.
Elizabeth Murray: This was right after my mother died. It's for her, really. I think death really opens people up. Just cracks your defenses completely. If only we could just stay that way.
Mia Matthias: Murray was able to use the events in her life as a source of inspiration. She didn't necessarily paint depictions of those events. She carried over the emotions of those experiences.
There are these areas of the floor that she leaves unpainted. I think that's a kind of vulnerable moment where she exposes her hand. It seems like it adds to the unrest in the room—that the edges are unfurling.
Elizabeth Murray: I'm so intuitive. It doesn't come out of my head. It comes out of physically working it out. But painting is a very physical thing. I mean, you're standing at a table, squeezing this gooey substance out of a tube, and it's not something you can control it enough to say, I want this color, or I want it here. You have to really go with it.
Archival audio from: Elizabeth Murray and Dodie Kazanjian. Interview with Elizabeth Murray, 2005 June 7-July 20. Dodie Kazanjian papers, 1949-2025. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.