Ethan Murrow
DOB 1975 Greenfield, MA USA
Ethan Murrow is an artist and Professor of the Practice in Drawing and Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. His multidisciplinary practice—which spans drawings, paintings, murals, sculptures, and publications—delves into narrative explorations of landscape, environment, agriculture, and the subjective nature of history.
Ethan is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris, Obsolete Gallery in Culver City, California, and Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York City and Seattle. His work is included in numerous public, private, and corporate collections and has been widely reviewed and published internationally. Notable recent commissions include projects for the Louis Roederer Foundation in France, Expedia, Meta, The Broad Institute and D+S Editions France.
Ethan's solo museum exhibitions have been presented at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Currier Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, and the Clay Center in West Virginia. Among his accolades are the Stein Prize with MOCA Jacksonville, a monograph published by Hatje Cantz, and an official selection for the New York Film Festival.
I grew up on a tiny farm in rural Vermont. We were new to raising sheep, so we asked neighboring farmers to assist us. Their advice was a mixture of evidence tested animal husbandry and deep knowledge handed down from family and friend. Some of this latter understanding was less scientific yet just as helpful. For example, the ways in which many animals have fore-knowledge of danger long before humans do or the fact that dowsing can help you locate a well. These tips were not myths, but they weren’t explicitly factual either.
Ever since these youthful experiences, I have tried to remember that I definitively do not know everything that is happening around me, that I probably need to open my senses up and see if there’s some sort of magic or alternate story under my feet. Directionally, this feels appropriate, because while dowsing may be a falsehood, it also often points to water, so something’s up.
My projects are invested in a more vibrant partnership with the ecological world around us. Many refer to humans as part plant and celebrate delving deep into the earth with total abandon. The drawings, paintings and site-specific pieces are also tinged with a suspicion that the various character’s beliefs are filled with flaws, misinformation, and rose-colored views. The figure’s commitment to their cause is unquestioned but may not equal enough to achieve much more than reveling. That said, I like to think that the actions I refer to are still useful and necessary, albeit absurd, because they speak to a need to fall in love, burst into song and barrel through the flowers. I believe in the power of affection as we try and figure out how to be good partners with this planet.
I strive to build pieces that are filled with a love of the fertile, bursting and complex ecology that pulses around us. I want to live in a realm that encourages a view of the world that doesn’t just center humans, but elevates the funny, magical and strange place we call home.