Featured Artist Leyla Murr

Abstract artist Leyla Murr finds inspiration in the world around her – shapes, colors, and compositions, when creating her acrylic paintings. To see more of her work, please visit her website.

 

 

Inspiration essentially comes from my love of making art and derives from my looking at the world in a way an artist does.

 

 

It usually involves recalling a visual and emotional experience of one or more colours, shapes or compositions that caught my eye somewhere. My inspiration is also drawn from sources that I am not necessarily aware of; the ones that are imbedded in my memory or my subconscious as a result of my constant desire to be open to new and exciting ideas and experiments.

 

 

I am also inspired every day by going to my studio–a very special place where I enjoy the process of painting. I look forward to starting on a new canvas, feeling my way through the colours, shades and shapes and exploring different techniques and finding out what works all the while not knowing where it will all end.

 

 

Recently I have been working on an abstract piece using bright colours: bright olive greens and aqua blues in the foreground against the darker hues supporting them in the background. The feel of the painting was not planned, it happened organically. While I am working I am trying to achieve a certain balance that feels right. In fact it is all feeling with very little thinking or planning.

 

 

I work very quickly and intuitively and use a mirror a lot to regularly check where I am going. I begin with a colour and a shape and create a composition that works for me. I use acrylics on canvas and paint with brushes and palette knives. It takes me two to three sessions to complete a painting, sometimes less.

 

 

When I first started painting on a regular basis eleven years ago, I had no plan. I had no idea of the time it would take me to progress, nor the direction to go in. I didn’t think that people would like my work let alone be prepared to buy it. I want to master the abstraction in painting as far as it will go for me. In order to do that, I paint every day and keep at it. My goal is just to keep going and see what happens!

 

 

In the meantime, I have been promoting my work on line and have a couple of exhibitions in galleries every year. I am learning who my customers are and which areas they live in. It would be useful for me to target these areas more in the future as a goal.

 

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