ARTIST BIO

NORA CATHERINE MURPHY

Nora Murphy grew up in rural Ohio.  She went to Catholic school for elementary where she learned she was smart, and she loved art.  

Nora then went to preparatory school where she learned she was not smart, but she loved making art. 

She then went on to Boston University in 1995, to study Biblical Archaeology.  It did not go well.  

After a weekend visit to Pratt Institute with a BU buddy Nora decided to stop fighting the inevitable and transferred to the Cleveland Institute of Art.  Cleveland was the perfect place for Nora to work and she fell in love with the city, the Lake, the museums, the music and the space. Ohio became and remains her muse.  

Right now Nora paints primarily, but she has never thought of herself as a “painter” so much as a maker.  She continues to draw, sew, and sculpt when she can get her hands on clay.  

Nora’s early life in Ohio was a magical and insane combination of Rust Belt and nature and confessions and penance and absolution, of sinners and saints and farmers and animals.  It was heaven and hell on earth.

She now lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and daughter.