Meg Lionel Murphy standing before her work “The Ecstasy of Escape” at the artist reception for her solo NYC debut show “Traumatica Dramatica”

Meg Lionel Murphy received degrees in Art, Art History, and English Literature from the University of Minnesota — Twin Cities, where she additionally studied classical oil painting in Florence, Italy. After college, Lionel Murphy worked as a children’s illustrator and co-founded a literary and art magazine, Paper Darts. She also helped to run the arts nonprofit, Pollen Midwest, that uses storytelling and art to explore social justice movements.

After leaving her career in publishing to focus on painting, Lionel Murphy eventually moved to rural Wisconsin to focus on her art without distraction. Her artwork has been presented in exhibitions throughout the US, including 2020 solo shows “Interior Violence” at CoExhibitions Gallery (Minneapolis), and “Meg Lionel Murphy” online solo show presented The Untitled Space, as well as a number of group shows including at Public Functionary (Minneapolis), Jolby And Friends (Portland), Waiting Room Gallery (Minneapolis), and the Other Art Fair (Los Angeles).

The Untitled Space is pleased to present “Traumatica Dramatica,” Meg’s debut New York solo exhibition, on display through July 2, 2021. Curated by Indira Cesarine, Lionel Murphy’s paintings are directly influenced by her own personal experiences, as she copes with debilitating PTSD from severe domestic violence. She works out of a little blue shack in a junkyard on her family’s property in Wisconsin, where she paints detailed, vivid works on paper and panel depicting heartbroken giants that magically grow larger, stronger, and scarier than the world around them.“Traumatica Dramatica” addresses violence against women from her own perspective as well as the historical precedent of emotional and physical violence against women throughout the canon of art history.

This interview was originally published June 22, 2021

Interview by Isabel Hou

You currently have a solo exhibition at New York’s Untitled Space called “Traumatica Dramatica.” Can you talk about the pieces you’ve included? How do they fit into the exhibition’s theme? And how did you decide on the exhibition title “Traumatica Dramatica?”

The paintings in “Traumatica Dramatica” are monuments to the wounds of violence and mental illness. Hung together, the imagery creates an epic story of how traumatic memories and extreme moods manifest deep within the body.

The title “Traumatica Dramatica” is supposed to capture a single moment where you know something has to change. When life as you are living it is unbearable and superhuman strength is needed to enter a new phase of growth.

I grew up in a family and community where people were constantly having apparitional experiences of the Virgin Mary. She was just showing up, all ghost-like, like it was no big deal, helping people when people needed their lives to change and wanted to LIVE. I wanted to imagine a moment like that, not wrought of Catholicism — but a magic of unknown origin, hence the rainbows, manic flowers, lightning bolts, angels, strange weather, and unicorns. I wanted the title that could hold all of that, and winked at its audience. The title needed to land somewhere between a campy opera and a spell a little kid might cast. I hope it does that.

“Happy, Happy, Happy, Sad, Sad, Sad,” 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Wood Panel, 14 × 12 × 1 in, 35.6 × 30.5 × 2.5 cm

In your artist statement, you write that “Traumatica Dramatica” conjures a world of fantasy...where violence magically transforms femme bodies into a monstrous size, “so that their pain must be seen, felt, and reckoned with.” Do you view your work as a means through which that world of fantasy may become a reality?

I think I naturally have a very trippy sense of reality. I try to invite my imagination into my “real life” as much as I can. I let the giants from my paintings manifest in my everyday world. I’ll walk down the street and choose to see them surrounding me, holding me, making trouble. I would have been too embarrassed to admit that a few years ago, but now I embrace it. Similarly, I want the paintings to do that. I want to transport a viewer to another place where these giants really do exist. I place doll furniture and doll houses on the floor of my installations so I can bounce the viewers back to childhood or make them feel like they are the giants. Are we all playing a game in the gallery? Or can we make the power of the giants real in our own lives? I am honestly not sure what is possible anymore.

Doll house installation at the “Traumatica Dramatica” show

The recurrent imagery of horses really stood out to me. For instance, in “Leave That Behind You,” a subject plays with a horse figure, while in “Prevail” and “Battlefield II,” the horses are depicted with male riders. Can you talk about the inspiration for this element of your work?

In short, little girls love horses. Powerful men also love horses. They are fantasies of play, escape, masculinity, and war. Additionally, I live in the country and horses are very…around. They are my neighbors and they are gorgeous. Also, I have tried as much trauma therapy as I can afford and equine therapy was very powerful. I can’t afford it anymore, so I think I try to bring the magic of that therapy into my paintings.

“Prevail,” 2019, Gouache on Arches Paper, Framed in Gold Wood, 44 x 36 in

“Shining Armor” (detail), 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Arches Paper, 79 × 25 × 1 in, 200.7 × 63.5 × 2.5 cm

You’ve written that you work out of a “little blue shack in a junkyard on [your] family’s property in Wisconsin.” How has this setting influenced you as an artist?

A few years ago I realized that the only way I could afford to make art was to move back home, where rent is very affordable and I could use an abandoned shack on my parent’s property as a studio. I have been selling enough paintings to cover rent for a bigger studio (with heat!) during the winter, but there is nowhere I’d rather paint than in the shadow of old sailboats and tractor parts on my family’s land. Many of my worst memories happened on that property and it feels triumphant to set my giants loose upon it.

“Harvest,” 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Arches Paper, 92 × 50 in, 233.7 × 127 cm

There are so many layers within your pieces. Literally, of course — “Now” is a particularly striking example — but also metaphorically. What is your creative process like? How does a painting come to be?

It takes years to build my paintings. I collect tiny objects to paint, and scout buildings for settings, and hear others’ stories of trauma along the way. I imagine the giants with me in my daily life, and suddenly they are ready to be painted. Once I start, it doesn’t take that long to paint, with the exception of the very large work. But gosh, I have hundreds of paintings I want to make, with stories built upon many lives and minds. But I never have enough time to get it all out. Living in Wisconsin helps me focus. Just thinking about this here makes me nervous and I want to get back to painting.

"Safe Space," 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Arches Paper, 25 x 24 in

There is a sense of both inherent vulnerability and immense strength within your art, and particularly within “Traumatica Dramatica.” Can you talk about how the two intertwine in your life and in your work?

By painting femme bodies over and over I am able to place myself back into my pained body. I am able to live. It is a better medicine than anything ever prescribed for my many diagnoses: PTSD, bipolar, anxiety, ADHD, agoraphobia, panic disorder. This patriarchal, capitalistic, white supremacist culture is making us sick. I am embarrassed by how terribly I cope with this world. Managing my life is very difficult for me. I really only paint. That is all I do. All I can do.

“Origin Story” (detail), 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Arches Paper, 79 × 26 × 1 in, 200.7 × 66 × 2.5 cm

You have exhibited in several other locales, including a solo show at CoExhibitions Gallery (Minneapolis). How do you feel you have managed to connect with your audience through these shows, particularly your audience of trauma survivors and womxn?

For years I’ve been painting these giants. At first, I painted them for myself and slowly I started showing them around Minneapolis, then Portland, then Los Angeles, and now New York. I can not tell you how difficult even the most basic of tasks was made impossible for me after leaving an abusive marriage. I had nothing. I was a broken human. It feels like a miracle to have pulled myself together enough to show my work professionally in New York. I still struggle every single day. But I can paint every single day. And when I paint, I can live.

Through showing my work, I’ve come to hold many, many stories from women, nonbinary, and femme-identifying bodies. But I hold a few women very, very close to the work. Years ago, fresh from experiencing severe violence, I walked into a support group for “abused women.” Most of the women there were much older than me. Thank goodness, I thought — I am taking care of whatever issues I have while I’m young. I won't have to be like them.

I didn’t realize at first that I would be exactly like them. So many of the women in that support group were agonizing over rape and domestic abuse that had happened when they were young. Years and years had passed for them. There would be no cure for any of us. I didn’t realize that the smell of pain would follow me for the rest of my life. I do believe it will, no matter what. And I am trying to make peace with that in these paintings. I don’t think I can make euphoric paintings of escape without going back to remind myself of the little rooms that once held those bodies, where their gender and strength, and role, and humanity were decided by someone else. And yet those women survived. They were in pain, but they were still trying to grow, no matter what.

“The Perfect Victim,” 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Wood Panel, 10 × 10 × 1 in, 25.4 × 25.4 × 2.5 cm

There is so much to unpack within the concepts of womxnhood, survival, trauma, and the ownership of one’s self. In your opinion, what does it mean to have bodily autonomy? What is it within your work that brings you to that place?

The word “woman” and what has become of “feminism” (particularly “white feminism”) frustrates me. I have not come to terms with the complexity of my gender, but I do understand it as femme. I used to love the word “womxn,” but now I understand what I wanted from that word was the feeling of what “she/they” give me now. My gender feels most defined by the fact my cunt has been taken from me more times than I care to count. My gender feels mostly defined by the tug of history — defined for me by a family lineage of strong, poor, complicated, flawed, women that barely survived their minds or the men around them. They live in me and with me.

I honestly don’t expect to have bodily autonomy ever again. I think it was taken from me. It is gone. When I paint, I can live in a pretend world where it exists. Safety is the ultimate fantasy of the work — there is no safety in our world. I am living in an afterlife of trauma and rebuilding a new relationship with my body which is much more connected to the bodily knowledge that matches others’ bodily knowledge. That is why my giants start alone and search for each other. I find peace in simply knowing of others’ stories and survival.

“Sink and Swim,” 2021, Acrylic Gouache on Wood Panel, 36 × 36 × 1 in, 91.4 × 91.4 × 2.5 cm

“Traumatica Dramatica” is on display at New York’s The Untitled Space through July 2, 2021

View more of Meg’s work on her site and Instagram

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Linda Friedman Schmidt

Isabel Hou is a student and artist interested in writing, advocacy, and law. She is based out of Pennsylvania and is currently living in Colorado.