"All these are images on the brink of the sublime: a sense of grandeur without the terror; they would be apocalyptic if they weren't so overwhelmingly otherworldly and serene"
- Andrew Lambirth
Collecting Colour was a sell out solo exhibition by Nina Murdoch at Marlborough Gallery, November 2018. Bringing together 16 large scale paintings and a selection of pastel studies, worked over four years. Together the paintings represented Murdoch’s recent simplification of her subject matter, concentrating on her technique to allow the paint to assume greater importance. Every painting presents a time capsule of the artist’s life at the time it was painted. Titles of the paintings are inspired by the names of the songs Murdoch listened to whilst painting - one of her ritualistic, meditative practices. Murdoch layers egg tempera colour on gesso-coated board and then painstakingly scrapes back the surface to unveil earlier colours. These new works present abstracted urban views cut by luminous shafts of light.