Aileen Murphy @ Amanda Wilkinson

New paintings by Aileen Murphy function as vessels for the fictional figures she uses to investigate the multiple possibilities of making a painting. Faces appear in some as cartoon-like heads detached and floating on the canvas, their arms reaching out beyond the bounded surface. Legs stretch across the paintings, taking the measure of the picture plane – marking their confinement and stressing their constriction.

These ambiguous figures are both created and trapped by Aileen’s method of fast mark-making and slow layering.