Present Surroundings: Walter Murch, 1907-1967

“I think a painter paints what he thinks about the most. For  me, this is about objects from my childhood, present surroundings, or a chance object that stimulates my interest, around which accumulate these thoughts. I suppose you could say I am more concerned with the lowly and forgotten object, the one people discard because they are finished with it or see it in a certain logical automatic way that I would like to break.” 

“When I am in the painting, I don’t know what I am doing. After a period of getting acquainted, I begin to recognize that the painting has a life of its own. If I lose contact with its life the painting is a mess and if I keep harmony with it, it turns out well. It is possible to discover a work of art in the process of creating it. Beyond that, whatever emotional results may occur in the mind of the observer, I can’t control nor would I want to. I remain only the artist.”

From Walter Tandy Murch: An Introduction, by Michael Grimaldi, Linea, 2007

Walter Tandy Murch bio.

More on the artist can be found at Painting Perceptions.