Kate Patricia Murphy
I was born in 1985 in Merthyr Tydfil and have lived in Bedlinog, a small valleys village near Merthyr Tydfil all my life.
I attended Afon Taf High School where I achieved my A Level in Art and Design and was successful in winning the prize for best A level student in my subject.
I went on to study fine art at Glamorgan Centre for Art and Design Technology where I gained a BTEC National Diploma in Foundation studies in Art and Design Technology, and a City and Guilds qualification in Life Drawing.
I spent the next three years at Glamorgan University where I graduated with a BA (hons) in Art Practice, the course cumulating in our final exhibition entitled Create 08.
Three of my pieces are in the University of Glamorgan Collection.
My work is derived from an interest in my surroundings, as my upbringing has been concentrated within a small valleys community, which is very close-knit.
I have worked at Bedlinog Constitutional Club for the last six years as a barmaid; in the preliminary stages of the work I began to develop an interest in the club and its idiosyncrasies.
I am interested in beauty within imperfection, the familiar, the unfamiliar within the familiar, ideas of change in a seemingly unchanging setting, repetition, routine, and more particularly the romantic and passionate. My fondness for the club helps me to see its imperfections with love: I find beauty in its imperfections and its familiarity.
Resistance to change is an imperative concept in this work, the habitual processes of the customers, sitting in the same seats, drinking from the same glass to the meticulous degree of leaving at the same time and having the same conversations. But, this is the way things have always been, why fix something that is not broken?
I explore the idea of recreating the atmosphere and experiance of the space, my use of palette and style suggest staining an permanence, as if the people and the space are one entity, they are inherent with the space, embedded within their surroundings. The composition is intended to situate the viewer within the painting, to condense the space and make the viewer feel that they are part of these surroundings.