12.26 is pleased to present People and Ocean and Sky, new works on paper by artist Joel Murray. People and Ocean and Sky is formed by overworked, intimate landscapes of layered images from news media juxtaposed with simple imagined seascapes. Exploring these two methods of working, Murray explores the idea that art can be one of many belief systems that humans create to manage, disguise, or escape anxiety of our own mortality. Presented with these notions, Murray alludes to particular themes and motifs found in art history and contemporary art dealing with memento mori, the inevitably of death, or the passage of time, and other formal and technical allusions. People and Ocean and Sky illustrates the desire to prolong existence in a chaotic world and transcend the inevitable.

Joel Murray (b.1985, Denver, Colorado) is a Dallas based artist, professor and museum educator. He received his MFA from Clemson University, South Carolina and a BFA from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Murray’s work has been featured in exhibitions at Umbrella Gallery, Dallas; Lillian Bradshaw Gallery, Dallas; Boxcar Gallery, Denver, Colorado; The Mac, Dallas, among others. Murray is a professor of art at Richland College in Dallas.