Wil Murray Puts the Pieces Together By Emily McDermott
Wil Murray likes puzzles. Not jigsaw puzzles, but the intellectual kind. Through his artwork, Murray presents us with a conundrum to solve: Where did he begin and where did he finish? Considering each individual piece, including the title, what is his aim? Perhaps more significantly, Murray’s attraction to puzzles is also reflected in his personal life.
“I’m really good at convincing myself that something’s going to be fantastic and I’m going to excel at it immediately,” the artist explains, “and then there’s a very long period of having to actually do it.”
Raised in Calgary, Alberta, Murray had little art exposure growing up. “I wasn’t very interested in art as a child,” he says, before admitting that the only class he ever failed was art (“I got a 29 percent one semester”). After high school graduation, he decided to attend university for art instead of philosophy, mostly because his “friends who went to art school were much more fun.” But art school didn’t last long. After two and a half years, Murray dropped out, deciding that he could figure out how to become an artist on his own.
“I’m really good at convincing myself that something’s going to be fantastic and I’m going to excel at it immediately,” the artist explains, “and then there’s a very long period of having to actually do it.”
Now, in his artistic practice, Murray often moves between mediums. Most recently, he’s married his painting with photography, learning the process as he goes. “Dragging painting into photography—painting on [film] negatives—reveals things that are often secret to me if I only work in painting,” the Berlin-based artist says. “It’s been surprising how limited a painter I am. I found out that I’m really just interested in paint strokes, and it is really less impressive than I thought.”
He’s currently working on a project that fuses his family history with historical events. He mapped out the route of Hoffman’s Novelty Circus, which was owned by his great-great uncle until it shut down in the 1940s. He first learned about the circus from his grandmother, whose summer job was as a dancer and ticket-taker. “My grandmother is now 95,” Murray says, “so when I go to visit her, this is what we talk about extensively.” For the project, Murray will photograph ten sites where the circus took place; they are also locations where balloon bombs fell during World War II.
Outside of art-making, Murray occasionally goes mushroom picking with his wife in a forest northeast of Berlin. “I first started doing it because of my wife. It was a way to connect with her and her world,” he explains, “but then it started to take on something interesting and meaningful.” For Murray, the hobby is both analytic and artistic. "It feels like really good training for art making, in a way,” he says. After a brief pause, the artist laughs and adds, “and then you have food at the end of the day.”