Boston-based artist Ethan Murrow has become internationally known for his virtuoso visual creations. Murrow’s approach combines disciplined, technique-based artistic practice with theatrical storytelling inspired by film and writing. Drawing inspiration from illustrational traditions, historical fiction, film, and photography, Murrow’s artworks are layered in meaning.
Theatrical Storytelling by Ethan Murrow
The characters in his paintings and graphite drawings often find themselves gleefully absorbed in nature, roaming and discovering the land, while balancing on the absurd. Ethan Murrow draws on the faded pastoral idealism of America, rendering mountains, rivers, and forests as impossibly sublime wonderlands ready for exploration. His flower-headed canoers and adventurers trudge and trapeze through the landscape with an almost childlike determination.
Balancing on the Absurd
At first glance, Murrow's large-scale drawing and paintings appear to be visual reportage documenting daring explorers, scientists, and adventurers but a closer inspection reveals the absurdity of it all - an astronomer conducting field research with ropes and whiffle balls, explorers wearing diving gear, a man wearing a table on his head.
Widely Exhibited
Ethan Murrow has been widely exhibited across the United States, and in France, Jordan, and Hong Kong. In addition to working on paper, Murrow creates large-scale wall drawings which have been featured in museums and corporate collections.
He received his bachelor's degree from Carleton College and his MFA from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Recent solo shows of drawings, video, and sculpture include La Galerie Particulière in Paris and Brussels, Slete Gallery in Los Angeles, Winston Wachter Fine Art in New York City and Seattle, and the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences in West Virginia. Murrow was recently commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston to build a two-story wall drawing for the Feinberg Art Wall in the museum's lobby.
More About Ethan Murrow
His work is in many public, private, and corporate collections and has been reviewed and published widely around the world. Murrow is a professor at the Museum School at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Murrow is also MOCA Jacksonville's 2017 Stein Prize recipient. Visit the artist's website for more information or stay up-to-date with his work and exhibitions through Instagram.
