Blog - Page 2 of 24 - Ingrid Murray

Hawaii & Iceland Art Journals

While I post my art journal pages regularly on my Instagram, I realized I haven’t shared a dedicated art post here in months. (Can I blame it on all this change?!)

At the end of April, I finished up my Hawaii art journal, named — like those from the past few years — for the atlas page on its cover. In July, I finally filmed a flip through:

Each art journal usually takes about three months to complete. Since joining the studio, though, the process has actually slowed as I figure out the logistics of how to create regularly in a dedicated space that is not in my home.

I’m just a few pages shy of completing my newest journal, Iceland, which will mark about three years of working in this size and style of handmade journal. Take a look at some of my recent art journal pages:

Offene Ateliers Köln

Detail of mixed media on paper, with black, lime green, blue, and neon pink as the primary colors.

Blank pages within a bound handmade book.

Diptych mixed media on paper, with shades of green, white, and dark blue as the primary colors..

Detail of clorful mixed media piece on paper.

Diptych mixed media on paper, with black, lime green, blue, and neon pink as the primary colors.

Diptych mixed media on paper, with shades of yellow and peach, white, and neon orange as the primary colors.

Front cover of handbound book. It features gnome-like creatures painting a large blue question mark.

Last weekend — only about week after I joined the studio collective — Atelier No 5 participated in Offene Ateliers Köln (Open Studios Cologne). The once-a-year event invites art studios throughout the city to open their doors and artists to share their work.

We held a reception on September 8, and despite having little to show given my move and limited time in the studio before the event, I was thrilled to sell two pieces (above, bottom left). While my personal art journals aren’t for sale, I was also proud to showcase several years’ worth and speak about the process of creating them (in German!).

A white wall with 10 colorful abstract art pieces in varying sizes. On a table below sit four completed art journals and two blank art journals.

Atelier No. 5

A wooden table with a beginnings of a handmade book and bookbinding supplies.

I am exceedingly excited to share that I joined a shared studio space at Atelier No. 5 in the south of Koln. This opportunity allows me to connect with the artist community, build new relationships, and spread out and get messy (without the threat of curious cats).

Other artists currently at the space include:

Daniela Buchal
Bernadette Cornelius
Caro Döring
Martha Frances Ebken
Manu Beermann
Anja Meyer
Anke Ricklefs
Tanja Schmiechen
Claudia Tober
Juliane Trautmann

So much more to come.

Butterfly Words

A close-up of orange-yellow berries and leaves against a concrete backdrop.

Orange-yellow berries and green leaves against a concrete wall.

Words swirl around my head constantly. I rarely extract them, afraid of the uncertain consequences of others knowing what I really feel. The danger of expressing myself, of it being the wrong thing said the wrong way.

I have a deep fear of being misunderstood. Of being punished, cruelly, immediately, publicly, for my own imperfection in expression, for letting myself tumble over my own lips and into others’ ears, eyes, and brain.

So I keep them, these thoughts, worries, and wonderings. I keep them tucked in my head and heart, where they beat against my skull and ribcage like butterflies desperate for the sun, for pollen, for the wind.

For their own good, I think. To keep them safe.

Recently, though, I have felt a nudge to open that cage, to let the viscera of my inner world spill out into the real world. My gatekeeper is exhausted, and I can’t help but think fuck it. Let it be what it is.

(I’m reminded of Anais Nin’s apt if oft-quoted line: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”)

The imperfection and mess I find so easily in my art journal, I want to decode all that and say what I mean, mean what I say, to shed the cloak of politeness and dive into raw, real authenticity. For too long I’ve squeezed myself — my brain, my lungs, my body, my being — into the tiny (but ever-changing) box of What Is Acceptable, and I’m tired and sore and cramped in weird places.

Freedom ↔ safety.
Scrubbed raw ↔ a veneer.
Butterflies.

Fuck it.