“It is the common things that compel me to paint; busy streets, the factories, the harbours. This is where people live their lives, a place where I can speak in paint and record the humble beauty of the simple things around us.” ~ Murray Van Halem
On the Street II
Inspired by a photograph by photographer Leah den Bok.
For AWP Exhibit 44, Murray is sharing a selection of portraiture. His inspiration for this body of work comes from people he knows, people he meets, and people he represents. It is a visually stunning collection of work that inspires the audience to experience where being human meets the beauty of what is possible to see and witness in ourselves and others.
On the Bus
Of his own work, Murray says:
The human face is a canvas in itself and the making starts at birth.
A baby is born and looks at its mother’s face and the mother returns the gaze. From then on we continue to scrutinize other people’s faces. We look for expressions and emotions such as love, anger or compassion. We may not notice many things around us but we will always look at a face.
I started my working life as a photographer and fell in love with recording other people’s faces. I worked as a photojournalist and portrait photographer, all the while documenting the people
around me.
Now as a painter, I continue to interpret the faces of the people I see. I may paint from memory,
from photographs or studio models if they’re willing to sit for hours.
Each portrait tells a story and I invite you to create your own.
Stevie in Red
Murray is a Canadian landscape artist and portrait painter working in oils.
A graduate of Montreal’s School of Modern Photography, he began his career as a large-format commercial photographer and worked as a photojournalist, portrait photographer,
magazine editor and real estate broker. Primarily a self-taught painter, Murray has attended the Haliburton School of Art and the Dundas Valley School of Art. He now works daily at his Dundas, Ontario studio.
Tragedy of Two
Tragedy of Two is a tribute to those who perished in the Killing Fields of Cambodia in the 1970s. I visited the Killing Fields and the Museums dedicated to this event. Background images are from the S21 Prison museum. The main image is from one of the photos displayed there. If he were alive today he would be my age, in his 70s.