Murrell, Susan. if water had its way, installation view, 2021. 2022 Individual Artist Fellow, Oregon Arts Commission.
Originally published February, 2022
Susan Murrell’s work investigates an expanding concept of landscape as our perspective continues to shift amid the climate crisis. Her paintings, installations and works on paper have been created as a meditation on passageways, life transitions and the constancy of matter.
Murrell has been awarded residencies at many international programs such as Yaddo, Ragdale, Arteles in Finland and Westfjords in Iceland. In 2021 her project “if water had its way” was exhibited at Carnation Contemporary in Portland and the Klemm Gallery at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. Other recent solo exhibitions include “Absent Presence” at Carnation Contemporary and “we are all cosmic dust” at the Autzen Gallery at Portland State University. Recent group exhibitions include “Making a Better Painting,” at the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College; “Edge and Mirror: Landscape in the Anthropocene,” at the Kay Hardy and Gregory Kaslo Gallery, Center for the Visual Arts at Boise State University; and “Outland About,” a two-person exhibition at the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University. She often gives public gallery talks, artist lectures, interviews and participates in panel discussions. Susan has received multiple Golden Spot and Mid-Career Artist Awards through the Ford Family Foundation. In 2017 she was awarded a sabbatical and was also recipient of the Oregon Arts Commission’s Career Opportunity Grant. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, where she explores this spectacular corner of the state with her dog, Amiga.
Courtesy of the Oregon Arts Commission.
Artist Credit: Susan Murrell