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Michelle Champion Murphy (or Mikey as she prefers to be called) greets me at the door of her Habersham Street home outside of which I notice, for the very first time, a little plaque that reads ‘Murphy Gallery on Troup Square’. How can I have loved art and lived in Savannah for three decades and not seen this before?!
The sign turns out to be a bit of a misnomer; Although we initially sit together in her dining room where she used to welcome folks to view her art, it is no longer set up as a gallery and studio visits are now by appointment only. As many artists find, it proved too difficult to keep regular gallery hours and run an art business while still finding time to create. These days, Murphy is content to let outside galleries take 50% of her sales price in return for having the freedom to paint.
The artist’s home is nothing short of amazing. During my tour, I repeatedly said to her that she must be married to an angel! Who else would put up with canvases and frames filling every square inch of space? When she, and her husband, urologist Brent Murphy, MD, bought their circa 1885 home, the historic central staircase had been ripped out in the 60’s and replaced with open treads reaching from the ground floor to the third floor. It is jarring. But somehow it works.
On the second floor, one turns right from the stairwell into a beautiful parlor with a grand piano that looks out at tree-level to the square below. The grand piano and most of the seating are nowhere to be found – lost beneath a sea of paintings. Even though this floor is not technically her studio, she has laid a drop cloth by one window, set up an easel, and is working on several large-scale pieces. Running alongside the stairwell is a passageway off which is the couple’s bedroom and it, too, is lined with stacked canvases and beautiful, antique gilt frames. On the third floor, at the top of the stairwell, is Murphy’s studio proper – a messy space filled with polystyrene plates of dried-up oil paints, canvas tacked to the walls, and several paintings in process.
So, you get the picture….this woman is prolific! Murphy tells me that growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio she was always artistic. She earned a degree in Fine Arts from Marymount College, Arlington, VA in 1968, later studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and taking courses all over the world. In her early years as an artist, her work was more representational. She focused on drawing before moving on to watercolors and oils: “I did nudes for at least twenty years! ” Today, a self-described “abstract expressionist colorist,” I find her paintings to be exuberant, free, impressionistic, and decidedly feminine.
She favors painting the domestic interiors and the courtyard of her historic home with its wrought iron patio furniture and urns of colorful plants… In an almost Cezanne-like painting entitled “Breakfast Table” she employs tropical pinks and turquoise, reminiscent of a Lily Pulitzer Floridan palette… She portrays the views from all her windows – often including the transoms and mullions in the works. I look at several abstracted paintings of the Unitarian Universalist Church across from her home, numerous gestural renderings of the square itself, some of the fountain in Forsyth Park.
In “Troup Square” the elements are broken down to the most basic geometric forms – the angular walls, the rounded shrubbery, the hoops of the armillary sphere…. She repeatedly captures beautiful florals, often portraying the flowers in her own courtyard… She paints beach scenes of sun worshippers and sea bathers where one can almost breathe the salt water and suntan lotion. In “European Holiday” she draws the viewer in with the cornflower blue of the sea, the duck egg blue of the sky, the yellow and peach suggestion of sand, and the indications of striped beach umbrellas. Her skill in abstracting detail seems effortless.
Most recently, Murphy has begun painting in a more and more expressionist manner and on a larger and larger scale. She’s starting using charcoal and acrylic in her effort to become even looser than before. Gone are the heavy gilt frames that so strikingly offset her modern style and feminine colors; she prefers the newer massive canvases to stand unframed and alone. “Garden Party,” another view of her courtyard table and florals, is a huge 50 x 66 inches.
Indeed, this is where I first saw the artist’s large-scale paintings and knew I had to meet her. Owner Rebecca Wyatt met Murphy when she entered the gallery’s inaugural “Heartstryngs” competition, and her painting “Celebration” won second place. Wyatt tells me, “I have really enjoyed getting to know Michelle and hearing about her passion for painting. She has such a warm caring spirit, and her paintings reflect that inner beauty and vibrancy.”
Champion’s home, as I have described, has several works in progress at any one time (on different floors!) Her method is to “set work aside.” She says, “You must get far away from the work and have ‘fresh eyes.’ I have a reverse magnifying glass to look at paintings so I can see what’s going on.” In her upstairs studio she has large panels of canvas tacked to the wall where she is painting “thin to thick,” often starting with a pastel wash and then building up layer after layer of paint that she thins with mineral spirits. She sketches and makes watercolor studies before beginning her largescale works and tells me she is always “going for a feeling and for balance.” She talks about painting “whatever excites you, then ‘clicking the image in your head’ and working towards that excitement on the canvas.”
Champion sums up my visit by sharing these final thoughts, “I love living here in Savannah. Its so inspirational to look out my windows! I want to put the love that I feel into my work. That’s what I aim for.”
Readers can see more of Murphy’s work at www.michellechampionmurphy.com and look for her paintings to be featured in a summer 2024 show at ArtStryngs Gallery, 530 E. Liberty Street. Savannah, GA.
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