Nina Murdoch‘s atmospheric abstract paintings that emanate light

In her first solo exhibition for four years, Collecting Colour, Nina continues her exploration of light, space and architecture, depicting shafts of light in dark corners of the city.

Her dramatic and atmospheric abstract paintings can take years to create. She works meticulously, using many layers of egg tempera colour on gesso-coated board, then painstakingly scrapes back the surface to unveil earlier colours.

"Murdoch is perfecting annotation of the world as shifting, luminous, ultimately unreliable,” says art critic Andrew Lambirth in his catalogue essay that accompanies the new exhibition. "Her art encompasses the sudden shining forth of some aspect of truth or reality gathered from observation, invariably of the commonest events or objects, such as a light-fall in the corner of a supermarket car park. Such revelation requires a fresh painterly language, new and startling."

Nina Murdoch graduated from the Slade in 1993 and from the Royal Academy Schools in 1996. She won the first Threadneedle Award for figurative artists in 2008 and has since had solo exhibitions at The Fine Art Society and Blue Gallery before joining Marlborough Fine Art in 2011 with her first show, Shedding Light, followed by Enlightenment in 2014.

Nina Murdoch: Collecting Colour runs at Marlborough Fine Art in London until 24 November.