James Murnane

James Murnane (b. 1984) (BA(FA) Painting – RMIT University, 2006) is a Melbourne-based artist, whose work materialises theological notions of embodiment, connection, and the unitive nature of our interior and exterior lives. 

Layers of paint and gilding are built up on wood panels, then delicately attended to by carving in response to the paint or woodgrain, then painting in the carved lines with a shimmering gold. Other works are started by making drawings into the surface of a wood panel with an embossing needle, over which paint and gold leaf are applied. 

Though Murnane’s works are non-representative, Murnane’s materials are richly symbolic. The wood panels, as with a human body, are organic and of the earth, whilst the ethereal grace and brightness of iridescent paint and gold leaf indicate the spiritual principle of a person. The marriage of the two, a material analogy for the contemplative and active lives, the union of the heart and the embodied experience, the eternal and temporal, spiritual and physical. The shimmering and rippled surface–an analogue of the spiritual life–where moments of vivid brightness contrast with the more subdued.