View From the Backyard; Lexington
1972–1973

View from the Backyard; Lexington, is a hyper-realistic image of the Massachusetts suburb where Catherine Murphy grew up. Here, she depicts a quaint residential house, surrounded by lush and verdant foliage. To the left of the house, a man stands knee-deep in brambles with his back turned away from the viewer. The man stands rapt, his attention captured by someone or something just beyond the picture frame, but the artist prevents us from seeing the object of his concentration—perhaps the real subject of the work. By referring to activity outside of the depicted image, Murphy imbues her scene with a temporal dimension. “My paintings aren’t about that one moment of seeing,” she says. “My paintings are about time passing.” In View from the Backyard; Lexington, the canvas unfolds less as a snapshot and more as a continuous narrative, of which we see only a fragment.