Ryan Sarah Murphy is a collage artist, working primarily with found cardboard and perceived detritus. She investigates the impermanence of material and its ability to convey both formation and dilapidation. Drawing on architecture, landscapes, and the topographical intersection of the urban and natural environments around her, Murphy's constructions interrogate the boundary of growth and decay.
Born in 1978 in Rutland, Vermont, Ryan Sarah Murphy earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY in 2001. Her work has been shown across the United States, with exhibitions opening at Outrageous Look Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2007), Liliana Block Gallery in Dallas, TX (2013), Platform Gallery in Seattle, WA (2015), Ground Floor Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2018), and HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State University (2022). Murphy has also been recognized internationally with exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Canada, Tasmania, Hungary, and Romania. Murphy's work is also included in the permanent collections of the Foundation Center in New York, NY and the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, MT. In 2014, Murphy received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant for sculpture and crafts. She has also held residencies at the I-Park Foundation, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, 77Art and PS122 Studio Residencies. Notably, Murphy's work has also been recognized and reviewed in the New York Times, ARTnews, and Maake Magazine.
Ryan Sarah Murphy's creative practice is intuitive and process-driven, generated by the found ephemera of her daily experience. Her work is rooted in landscape, where the geometry of the horizon line acts as a conceptual or physical starting point for works on paper, video animations, photography, or sculptural reliefs. Through her artwork, Murphy examines the psychological underpinnings within spatial forms and how the configuration of architectural elements can be shaped to personify one's inner experience.