Informed by current events, personal experience and the history of painting, I navigate the intersection of gender, class, and consumerism. Through my practice, I reflect on how consumerism co-opts and commodifies femininity, how politics police women’s bodies, and how systemic inequality is disguised within aesthetics.

Through a combination of personal narrative and sociopolitical critique, these themes surface in works that visually seduce through beauty and surface, drawing viewers closer only to confront them with deeper, often uncomfortable truths.

The painted surface plays a central role in this dynamic. I employ color symbolism, trompe l’oeil techniques, and deliberate materiality to oscillate between illusion and confrontation. Beauty is a strategic tool in my work—a lure that invites intimacy before exposing the complexities beneath.

Margaret Murphy is an artist, educator, and curator working between Baltimore, MD and Jersey City, NJ. She is currently the Director of the Center for Visual Arts at Johns Hopkins University.

Murphy holds a BS from Towson University and an MFA in Painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. 

Her paintings and mixed media works have been exhibited internationally, including shows at  Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, Pentimenti Gallery, HPGRP Gallery (NY and Tokyo), Jersey City Museum, Gallery Aferro, Real Art Ways, Smack Mellon, and others.

She has received numerous honors, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, two NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowships, multiple Puffin Foundation grants, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, and featured on PBS's State of the Art. Collections include Deutsche Bank, Jersey City Museum, and private collectors.

As a curator, Murphy has organized exhibitions at Johns Hopkins University, the Visual Art Center of NJ, and was the director & curator of The Garage in Jersey City.