ABOUT LIZ
Liz Murphy paints like someone who has lived many creative lives and finally arrived at the one that feels most like home.
Born and raised in Surrey, England, she studied Graphic Design at Kingston University and went on to build a multifaceted career as a designer, illustrator, and creative director. In 2005 she relocated to Montclair, New Jersey, and in 2013 founded Liz Murphy Designs, an interior design studio known for its intuitive, soulful approach to color, texture, and spatial harmony.
In 2018, following a divorce and a health scare, Liz turned to painting to find her way back to herself. What began as a private act of repair and a way to rediscover her joy, not long became her language of freedom, grounded in curiosity, surrender, and a deep connection to emotion and color.
_edited.jpg)
_edited.jpg)
_edited.jpg)
Pulling from four decade as a creative professional, her paintings are layered conversations between structure and spontaneity, refinement and rawness - an ongoing exploration of the contrasts that shape both art and life. Each piece carries traces of her design sensibility yet speaks with the honesty of intuition. Now collected internationally, Liz’s paintings can be found in homes and public spaces around the world, including President Clinton’s Harlem office.
Voted as the top 50 most influential abstract art influencers on social media, as artists, teacher, and mentor, Liz is excited to share her signature 3C Method - Color, Contrast, and Composition - guiding artists in an Elite program to uncover their authentic creative voice and build a bridge between intuition and design. For Liz, painting is more than an act of making; it’s a way of living - an ever-evolving dialogue between soul and surface, between what is seen and what is felt.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings are rooted in the expressive dialogue between color, contrast, and composition - the pillars that define both my art and teaching practice. Working primarily in acrylics, I build multiple layers that are both opaque and translucent, to create visual depth and emotional nuance. Each layer holding evidence and threads of what came before: marks, drips, erasures, and re-emergence. These traces not only reveal the history, but mirror the process of being human - messy, resilient, ever-evolving.
My work explores the language of color and contrast - how emotion lives within form, and how beauty can emerge from tension. Each painting is a conversation between energy and stillness, intention and intuition. I paint to connect - to create pieces that not only resonate long after the first glance, but hum with an emotional presence, transforming the atmosphere of the spaces they enter. I love being able to combine the experience gained over four decades of being a creative professional, along with my deep desire to make authentic soul reaching creations that ignite a sense of wonder and connect our humanity.
HOW I GOT HERE:
THE JOURNEY THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
Abstract painting arrived unexpectedly in my life in 2019. After a health scare, a divorce, and the sudden stillness of an empty nest - the realization that I had lost sight of myself along the way hit me hard.
Needing to find a way home to myself and hopefully uncover some joy along the way, I gave myself permission to play. Picking up a paintbrush felt like the most natural thing to do - for as early as I can remember, I was always drawing, painting, making, creating. What dawned on me was that as an adult, I had never created purely for myself. Now was the time to discover what would the art I created even look like if no one handed me a brief? If there were no expectations, no deliverables, no one to please?
Enter Abstract Expressionism.
What I didn’t know then was that this simple act of curiosity would become the greatest medicine of my life - a way not just to heal, but to thrive, expand, and blossom in ways I could never have imagined.
Even though abstract painting was completely new to me, art and design wasn’t. I had an extraordinary foundation in art from a young age and formal design training from 18. Those early years taught me how to see - the psychology of color - how it interacts and impacts, how form holds emotion, how design creates meaning. And the decades that followed, working across various design disciplines, creative direction, illustration- all I have since discovered played a critical part in determining and building my creative voice and aesthetic.
And so much to my delight, when I stepped in front of a canvas in 2019, all of that experience rose quietly to support me. My long varied background became the invisible architecture beneath the work - the way I build palettes, shape compositions, navigate commissions, trust the alchemy of contrast, rhythm, and balance.
What I didn’t expect was how profoundly the practice would transform my inner world. For the past seven years, I’ve worked with devotion - honing my skills, deepening my understanding of color, contrast, composition, emotion, intention, and the language of abstraction. And every step of the way, the more I learned about my art, the more I learned about myself.
My work now lives at the intersection of intuition and intention - a merging of my design mind with my artistic voice. I think like a designer and paint like an artist, allowing structure to meet instinct and instinct to reveal meaning. Painting has become my place of communion, my connection to something larger than myself, a quiet meeting point between the human and the divine.
It’s where I explore what is seen and what is felt.
Where clarity and chaos sit side by side.
Where I feel most seen as wholly myself, aligned and living my truth.
