Nancy Murphy Spicer is a US artist whose practice is centered around physical approaches to drawing including works on paper, installations, sculptures, performances, videos and artist books.

Recent projects include:

Biking in Berlin a series of sculptural works on paper resulting from a residency in Berlin. These works are based on shapes delineated by circumnavigating the city on bike as well as shapes of architectural details in the city. Built through a sculptural process of cutting, painting and repairing, the works display a brash use of color with matte layers built up, creating a sense of presence.

Disrupted Drawings, a series of larger works initially inspired by the Berlin works. With these drawings, the language of shape is developed within the world of each drawing. Each individual work has a different trajectory and culminates at an unexpected place. A single, simple organic form is painted on the surface of gesso-prepared rice paper. The image is then disrupted by a single cut and then repaired by repurposing the pieces so the shape morphs into a new form.

This repairing has a logic to it with the goal being to make the thing whole again. It’s a practical task while also involving aesthetic decisions. As the repairs accrue, the whole becomes more solid and assertive as an object.

Hanging Drawings is a series of physical lines which operate in three-dimensional space to make living, provisional drawings. The lines can be adjusted on a series of hooks to form continually new drawings. In the work, the artist has created a tool which allows for an endless variety of simple organic drawings that have a presence in architectural space and invite engagement.

Watching Water is a mass participatory performance which invites participants to embody the movement of the tides within a collective experience, joining community with the natural landscape, over a 24-hour period. The inaugural performance of Watching Water will occur on Portreath Beach, Cornwall, UK, with subsequent performances in several other locations globally.

Over the past 15 years of building her practice, Murphy Spicer has been variously based in Boston, MA, US, Spike Island, Bristol, UK, and Space Studios, South London, UK. Recently returned to the US, she is currently based in a former Coca-Cola bottling works in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work has garnered attention resulting in numerous press reviews, several catalogs, grants and residencies in the US, the UK and Germany.

Murphy Spicer studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston focusing on drawing and performance. Her work has been shown and is held in collections in the US, the UK and Germany. She is represented by Carroll and Sons, Boston, Massachusetts, US.

Press

"Hanging Drawing Half-Drawn is a big physical event, a pouring of odd catenary arches that drape to and across the floor in a stop-action of self-description."
- Art New England

"The works in this show don't carry you away with color and drama. Indeed, they're spare, oblique, and lacking in narrative. They don't expect the viewer to make sense of them; rather, ?they invite you to engage and discover what the art provokes within you. Intrinsically, they're ?less about themselves than they are about you and your response to them. They work to open ?an empty space, in which your assumptions fall away or are elucidated, and your perceptive powers quicken."
- Boston Globe

“Somewhere indefinable between painting, sculpture and drawing resides Nancy Murphy Spicer's Drawing Objects.”
- South End News