Biography
Honorary Artist Member since 2012
Vivid pastel colors paint the New Mexico sky, as a wisp of a cloud softens the view to a luminous pink. Surrounded by this daily scene, Tucson and Santa Fe artist Tom Murray creates magnificent work in his High Desert Studio. Challenging compositions of dramatic western landscapes, featuring Arizona and New Mexico at their most beautiful, are his forte. Tom speaks of his work, “The landscape painter’s challenge is to take the totality of a scene, reduce it to a small flat rectangle while capturing as much of the essential quality of the reality as possible”. While tackling very intense and extremely complicated subjects like the Grand Canyon, a brilliant sunset, high county trees, romantic monsoon clouds, or even a Santa Fe winter; Murray’s work shows versatility in a wide range of landscape subject matter.
Born in Spokane, Washington his family moved to Arizona in 1957. Murray began drawing and painting as a youngster.
After a year of studying art at the University of Arizona, he pursued a career as a professional musician. In 1978 he devoted himself to his art full time. After working at an architectural firm as a commercial artist, Murray shifted his focus to landscape painting.
Murray has created a wide range of artwork, from abstract to photo-realism, but has focused on landscapes since 1980.
Self-taught, he has developed a technique that enables him to create paintings of depth and striking beauty. Best known are his renderings of the Grand Canyon, cloudscapes and landscapes. Murray’s work has been featured in western art magazines including Western Art Collector, Southwest Art, and Art Of The West. The Art Of The National Parks (book) Grand Canyon. Most recently in Art Of The West, January 2018.
