The Playwright Edward Albee once wrote, “If you are willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.” I came across this line while browsing Edward Albee’s personal collection of books and records in the library during a residency at ‘The Barn’ in Montauk, NY. His quote resonated as a reminder of something both familiar and necessary to hear again. In order to fully realise our own vision we have to be willing to try and willing to fail.
In New York, I became absorbed in the idea of taking everything in—an “omnivorous cast” of experience. This phrase surfaced one morning upon returning home, hitting me in a sleepy haze. Initially I hardly knew what it meant. Serendipity has a way of surprising us with bright sparks of unchecked intelligence and I was delighted that this title seemed to express my process abroad.
My time in New York included visits to the Pollock-Krasner House in The Springs, a modest two storey timber shingled dwelling; and to Louse Point, a pebbled inlet beach and favourite fishing spot of Willem de Kooning’s. My newfound New Yorker friends had enlightened me to stories of the East End Artists; Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Willem and Elaine De Kooning amongst others. Two of whom had personal connections to some of these famous figures.
“Tell your own story and you will be interesting,” said Louise Bourgeois. This constant feeling of remaining open to possibilities, doing away with preconceived expectations, and allowing new discoveries to emerge created a diaristic form of working. I found myself searching the natural environment for clues and collecting found objects, discovering once again that the natural world really is a guiding light for my practice.
From my studio window I spotted a tree growing across the boggy stream that seemed to possess a human character - It had flailing arms like an inflatable figure, long legs (one slightly bent) and hair sticking straight up. This was the genesis of my first large painting.
On the beach in Montauk I found a small rusty fragment of barbed wire which now appears as an uncanny running man in a large dark landscape. A piece of rubbish now ‘cast’ in a major role in this painting; I was ‘casting’ my net far and wide and eating everything.
The great art I had encountered milled around in my mind. Visions of Jack Whitten’s large sculptural, layered, scrape paintings I had seen at MoMA, Amy Sillman’s use of colour and line, the immense gravity of Richard Serra’s forms. On returning to New York city after spending April in Montauk, I was able to see Willem De Kooning’s “Endless Painting” at Gagosian; the sand from the beaches which inspired these works still between my toes, my breath now fully taken away.
Pia Murphy, 2025
