Tinney Contemporary is proud to present Clouds, Dreams, a new body of work from Marilyn Murphy.

Marilyn Murphy’s ethereal drawings and paintings are rooted in the visual language of mid-century advertising & cookbooks, found photographs, and scientific archives.

Executed with a profound command of technique and realist attention to detail, Murphy constructs a haunting dreamscape which distills–and unsettles–idyllic notions of American industry and domesticity. The artist describes subjects and objects with a surrealist slant: giant pastries hover overhead of anonymous protagonists, mysterious civic structures float amidst clouds or inky night, fire encroaches upon poolside canopies and garden parties.

Murphy lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee, where she taught as a professor of art at Vanderbilt University for 37 years. She has been awarded multiple research grants and residencies and has curated upwards of 30 exhibitions. She has shown in hundreds of exhibitions nationally and abroad, with her in multiple museums including the Frist Art Museum.

Her work is in many public and private collections including the Kemper Collection, Huntsville Museum of Art, the Boston Museum School, and the Prudential and Bridgestone Collections.