John B. Strong Fine Art
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Vivid pastel colors paint the Arizona sky, as a wisp of a cloud softens the view to a luminous pink.  Surrounded by this daily scene, Santa Fe Artist Tom Murray creates magnificent work in his high desert studio.  Challenging compositions of dramatic western landscapes, featuring Arizona and New Mexico at their most beautiful, are his forte.  Tom speaks of his work, “The landscape painter’s challenge is to take the totality of a scene, reduce it to a small flat rectangle while capturing as much o f the essential quality of the reality as possible.”

While tackling very intense and extremely complicated subjects like the Grand Canyon, a brilliant sunset, high county trees, romantic monsoon clouds, or even a Santa Fe winter along the Rio Grande; Murray’s work shows versatility in a wide range of difficult landscape subject matter.

Tom Murray was born in Spokane, Washington in 1953.  His family moved to Arizona in 1957.  Murray began drawing and painting as a youngster.  While studying art at the University of Arizona he pursued a career as a professional musician.  1n 1978, he devoted himself to his art full time.  After working at an architectural firma as a commercial artist, Murray shifted his focus to landscape painting.

Murray has created a wide variety of artwork, from abstract to photo-realism, but has specialized in creating landscapes since 1980.  As a self taught artist, he  developed a strong technique that enables him to create paintings of depth and striking beauty.  While traveling extensively southwest, Murray has developed a long lasting connection with the natural landscape and beauty.

Tom now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He is quite well known for his dramatic paintings of the Grand Canyon, cloudscapes and landscapes.  Murray’s work has been featured in Southwest Art, February 1987, December 2004 and American Art Collector, September 2010.  His paintings have also appeared in art book Arizona, Art Life and various local and national publications.

Tom Murray is a member of the Oil Painters of American and his oil paintings are found in fine collections in the U.S., Europe and Japan.