SANDY MURPHY PAI RGI

6 September - 11 October 2025

Our seventh solo exhibition with the esteemed painter Sandy Murphy PAI RGI

Previews Saturday 6 September 1-4 pm, with wine

Sandy Murphy was born in Irvine and grew up in Stevenston in an area of the town known as the Hayocks. His home lay at the edge of the town, and from his back garden he only had to take a few steps and he was in the countryside.

While growing up he spent a lot of his time exploring the woods, fields, estates and old quarries found close at hand with his lifelong friend and fellow artist, Jack Anderson. These childhood experiences help explain his interest and passion for landscape painting.

While working on larger work, he uses sketches and small working oil sketches created in the studio as a starting point or as a reference. But for the most part, his paintings tend to be conceived as he works, applying and removing paint, scraping into surfaces, images appearing and receding, colours and marks changed and altered as he tries to create a tactile vision of landscape.

His work has a number of recurring images. Sometimes it is the hills that surround West Kilbride where he lives and works, other themes are the landscapes of Galloway or the gorge at Culzean Castle, which has resulted in a series of paintings, two of which are included in this show.

Luckily for us, the Scottish countryside provides a never ending source of colour, texture and structure, ensuring that there are many more Murphy paintings still to be created.

Sandy Murphy studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1976 until 1980. A pupil of James Robertson and Duncan Shanks, Sandy’s richly textured oils have clear antecedents in Ghillies and Eardley. His intimate, carefully considered works stand comparison with the best works of both these masters of Scottish painting.

He was elected to the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (RGI) in 2000 and the Paisley Art Institute (PAI) in 2010.

Sandy Murphy's paintings are some of the most sought after in Scotland and the UK.

Work can be paid for with six monthly interest-free instalments
We ship worldwide from our gallery in the beautiful village of Blanefield, just north of Glasgow; UK delivery is free

Please get in touch if anything catches your eye, or if you would like more images of a particular work