A Conversation with Wil Murray
with director/curator Jeremy Todd

The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC
October 23, 2004

Jeremy Todd: How did painting come about for you?
Wil Murray: It was kind of a “fuck-you” to the Conceptual Art at school. That was definitely part of it. Initially it was an ironic pursuit of something that was NOT allowed. I mean with the interpretation of Abstract Expressionism at school – it was like, “I’m going to pursue the thing that’s most hated.” And then at some point I shifted. It’s like when you listen to music ironically and then it becomes a regular thing in your life and it becomes quite honest.

So, initially, the choice to paint was completely reactionary?
(laughing) Yes! Well – it was partly that I was introduced to the New New Painters, Graham Peacock and stuff like that. It was just not allowed at school. There wasn’t a dialogue. To pursue formalism was just an absolutely ridiculous thing to do at that point.

Where did you go to school and what was of interest there?
It was the Alberta College of Art. It was a lot of installation work and heavy conceptual work. In the drawing department were a bunch of left-over Modernists teaching us charcoal-on-paper drawing. They were encouraging but they were very much at a point that they had very, very small voices at the school. They were deemed sexist, racist – everything in the book – and these were the teachers that I wound up gravitating towards – not because of the sexism and racism. They were limited in how encouraging they could be by the institution itself.

Are you equating a kind of moral righteousness with neo-conceptualism at that institution?
Conceptual work was very much valued but there were these undercurrents… I took this position at school of – and every art school has one every year – of being a rebel. This was something I could pursue. Leaving school is when this shifted. All of a sudden there isn’t a whole institution for you to shake your fist at. What are you left with? You’re left with painting. That’s really when it came about – was after school. Once I came to Vancouver and had a studio set up it was no longer a reactionary thing for me to be painting. It was just what I did.

You have told me on a few occasions that it doesn’t matter what discourse there is around your work – you will still go back into the studio tomorrow. Is what I and others look at here in the Gallery incidental to the process?
Well it’s partly that I have only had a studio practice. I haven’t been showing. What I do in the studio has been the important part of it all so far. I paint enough everyday to want to go back tomorrow and paint some more. It’s about finding a way to sustain a painting process. But it’s true that my claims to be a Formalist or whatever – well, it is impossible to be that… When I look at myself in comparison to other artists – that’s the only time that it really comes up – that what I am doing is a bit different. I find myself identifying with people working within a formalist context a lot more. Yes, the important part is my working in the studio. When I talk about accident and intention and all of these sorts of things that’s the venue that I work in.

Who are these people, historically speaking, that you are identifying with?
Well, since moving to Montreal, a lot of what I have been looking at is Riopelle, Bourduas – the Molinari stuff – and initially of course it was the Abstract Expressionists. Frank Stella’s later work I absolutely adore! He was definitely deemed terrible and impossible where I went to school. I saw it and loved it and my work often ends up looking like it somehow.

It does have Stella screaming out of it. There’s this hint of post-painterly geometric order and then some kind of imploding/ exploding spilling and chaos completely and irretrievably defacing it.
By the end of school that was the work I was looking at. Inevitably when you keep working and working on something it shifts. This happened with Stella. This is a relationship a lot of my friends have to my work. They come in and see the stuff all the time and fall in love with something and then it’s gone the next day. There are times when you break all the rules you have built up through your way of working up to that point. Or you don’t break the rules and instead there is a shift and those rules just don’t apply anymore. And so you have a lot of disappointed people on your hands looking at paintings they don’t like anymore. Back to the question of “who?” Another would be the New New Painters, who are a bunch of leftover formalists. There are paintings that hang in Montreal that I can go back to and visit regularly and begin to understand how painting is a longer look -- and actually have a relationship with the painting instead of a printed image in a book. This is one of the huge shifts for me in moving to Montreal. A lot of painters from the 50’s and 60’s are a huge part of that – what I’m looking at in the real right now.

Unlike a lot of contemporary artists, who paint or not, you don’t seem concerned at all with career strategy. Is this a conscious choice?
At some points it is, but it is also… Well, the working in the studio part of my practice is variously difficult and easy and good. For the career end of it I do make a conscious decision. The experiences I’ve had through school have turned me off of career-oriented behaviours. That being said I am making painting for people to look at. Right now I am trying to figure out these relationships. I need some way to assure I can keep painting in the studio. I’ve been in the studio three or four years trying to sort that one out. Regardless of critical discourse around my work, regardless of shows, it’s become essential to my life that I be painting. It’s very hard for me to step outside of myself and try to figure out if that’s a conscious decision or not. I associate with a number of people who are making music in that way, who are pursuing performance art and stuff like that, with no direction. A lot of it is aimless.

Is it aimless or indifferent to market forces?
Yeah. That’s it. I mean I have also built up a life where I work a day job and support my work that way. It’s been about eliminating the necessity of having shows and selling work and dealing with all of that. That being said I do want people to see them.