Drummond Murphy

Drummond studied textile design in the UK and then returned to South Africa to design fabrics for retailers and clothing manufacturers .
His paintings are influenced by illustrations, understandable as his uncle was, William Mitcheson Timlin, author of "The Ship that Sailed to Mars".

These images are from a series of works by Drummond entitled "Looking Up". In his statement he talks about our obsession with our cellphones and Ipads and how by engrossing ourselves looking down at a little screen of far off places we forget to look up and see the beauty in our own back yards.

DRUMMOND MURPHY
Barcelona Butterflies I
Painting / 71 x 91 cm

Looking Up #IV (Broadwindsor Apartments, Durban)
Painting / 61 x 61 cm

Looking Up #V (Namaqua Hse, Greenmarket Sq, CT)
Painting / 61 x 61 cm

Looking Up #III (Gardens Shul, Gardens Cape Town)
Painting / 61 x 61 cm

Looking Up #II (Market House, Greenmarket Sq, CT)
Painting / 61 x 61 cm

Looking Up #VI (Surrey Mansions, Durban)
Painting / 61 x 61 cm

Looking Up #I (Royal Albert, Salt River, CT)
Painting / 61 x 61 cm

My Thoughts:
The concept of our relationship with technology is certainly a hot topic and one worth visiting and revisiting. I know what a huge problem it is that we have become so addicted to our devices that we ignore or perhaps a better word would be neglect our immediate surroundings.
On social media we view images of far off places, and have those wish we were there moments and I think in the beginning of social media, perhaps people lost track of the beauty in there own surroundings and thinking that everyone else is out having more fun than us in more beautiful places.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So how have people reacted to the idea that we are less exciting than others?
The initial reaction was to have our faces buried in the worlds beyond the little screens and I'm sure a measure of depression may have set in for some, but a strange thing starts happening after that.
Humans competitive natures took over, we all want to appear to be having as much fun and seeing and doing exciting things and as the saying goes fake it till you make it. So many people started going out there with fake and exaggerated gestures doing crazy things, but eventually the extremists start toning down and we are left with is people going out and really looking for beautiful things or interesting things to post on social media sites. Real things, real events and thing of genuine visual value start emerging.

So while agree we may be too attached to our devices and there is certainly an argument that we have become addicted to them, I don't agree that we ignore or neglect our surroundings, if anything we are becoming more aware. Our competitive natures are forcing us to look around and look up, it comes down to the old idea of if the Jone's have that then we need to have something better and we going out there in search of it.

To come back to Drummond's paintings now. The works have these clean perfect lines and vibrant colours. In his statement he describes his work as realism, I would rather use the term idealized realism. The reason I say this is because he has unknowingly fallen into the social media trap of capturing an image that is more perfect than the reality of the object.
Why do say this? I know these buildings rather well, having grown up in Durban and worked in Cape Town for 8 years. The buildings are real and so is the beauty of their architecture, but the reality is that time and smog mean than these beautiful clean crisp colours are not. Dust and dirt have built up on these buildings, unless of coarse he painted them just after the buildings got a fresh coat of paint.
I think we need to learn to beauty even through the dirt, because it is beautiful as is, it shows history and the effects of time, like elderly people with creases of experience, laughter and tears, all are beautiful.
I still love Drummond's paintings, they are stunning. Isn't it wonderful that we can disagree on a concept and yet still love the work. :)

Images Sourced From:
https://www.stateoftheart-gallery.com/artists/232/drummond-murphy