Mary P. Murphy has a studio in Barneveld, New York, in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. She works primarily in watercolor, oil, and pen and ink, and she tries to capture the feeling of moments in time meaningful to her, thereby hopefully communicating those feelings to others. She says, “Art stops time for me temporarily – like the silence in the woods after a fresh snow, the quiet in the eye of a hurricane or the space between sounds of a musical caesura.”
Mary is a signature member of the Central New York Watercolor Society (CNYWS) and has been recognized in national shows sponsored by the Art Students League in New York City, Cooperstown Art Association, Marblehead MA Art Association and View Art Center in Old Forge NY.
She has received two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (one to exhibit and one to teach) and was accepted into the Art Students League comic book competition, This Quarantine Life Comics Anthology for her COVID pen and ink drawings (also shown as a solo exhibition at View Art Center).
Recent awards include both Second and Third Place in the 2022 Dodge Pratt Northam Art Center, First Place at the Dodge Pratt Northam Art Center in 2021, an Award of Merit at The Cooperstown National Juried Exhibition, Judge’s Choice Awards at the 2022 CNYWS Juried Exhibition, the 2021 View Arts Center Plein Air Paint Out Competition and 2019 CNYWS juried exhibition.
In 2022, the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, NY hosted her solo exhibit of watercolor and oils, and the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts in Blue Mountain Lake, NY hosted a solo exhibit in 2021. Other solo exhibitions include 2018 and 2021 at View Art Center in Old Forge, NY.
After a successful career in corporate communications as a speechwriter, she is now dedicated to art full time. She is a popular art demonstrator (watercolor floral painting at Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institution Edward Root Sculpture Court in April 2018) and workshop leader (for View and CNYWS) and guest speaker (Cazenovia Watercolor Society, Utica Rotary, Rome’s Wednesday Morning Club), and has served on several boards of her local arts institutions.
Murphy has pursued art all her life, though she did not do so professionally until she retired from her role as a speechwriter for the IBM Corporation. Throughout her career at IBM, she pursued art as a hobby and won awards in the Tufts University sponsored art contest, “On Your Own Time,” where her work was selected for the group’s national exhibition in Boston.