“I always begin a new work with the certainty that a figure will emerge which causes the excitement that encourages me to bring a canvas to life.”
Betty has spent a lifetime working with fragmented “real” stories about relationships and the emotions that accompany them such as passion, sadness, love, solitude, and loneliness. Her paintings focus on people and highlight the figure. Murchison states that her subjects are usually females because “[She] knows about females as compared to males, or animals, or things.” Murchison’s paintings are stories of the people we meet daily, the friends, family, and even people we encounter that somehow we connect with. She has an ability to be suggestive within her color scheme, that this person or groups of people that she has chosen to become her subject create that mood or that interest that keeps the viewer engaged. Ms. Murchison states,”I always begin a new work with the certainty that a figure will emerge which causes the excitement that encourages me to bring a canvas to life. This new body of work was painted in that manner. Most of the painting are more fully figurative, less gestural and have smoother and more even brushstrokes and color than some of my previous work.”
Her work has been shown extensively in the Washington DC area, as well as nationally, with her last exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, The Venezuelan Embassy, in Washington DC and Banneker Museum, in Annapolis Md. Ms. Murchison’s work is included in collections of H.B.O. New York, The City of Rockville and The District of Columbia Art in Public Places Program, and is enjoyed by collectors from across the United States.