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- Jul 22, 2023
- 3 min read

Robert Murray's Relief Sculptures of Landscape

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SATURDAY EVENING POST

July 22nd, 2023

Lancaster County, Painted steel, 2008, 30 x 21.75 in.

Photo credit: Kyle Juron

“One of the things that I found fascinating about flying was flying at relatively low altitudes and seeing the way the landscape played out in all its various characteristics...flying across Canada and going across the prairies and through the Rockies. You see an awful lot and it offers a point of view that traveling on the ground doesn’t afford you.”

Gum Tree Road, Painted steel, 2008, 30 x 22 in.

Landhope, Mixed media on paper, 2008, 50 x 38 in.

Photo credit: Kyle Juron

“So it was as a result of having taken a lot of photographs from my plane over the years that I got the idea for the reliefs. One of the things that did intrigue me was the patterning of woodlots and streams and the different colors of fields, and the way agricultural fields look after contour plowing the way they take on these eccentric kinds of shapes. And the way sloughs and potholes exist in the prairies. Very surreal shapes. After looking through some of my photographs I made some drawings, and by emphasizing or removing certain aspects, I got the idea of cutting these pattern-like shapes from a piece of thin steel, and forming the shapes to make a kind of topographical map. In fact those reliefs were meant to be shown lying down flat on a low base so you could look down on them, but I haven’t convinced anybody to show them that way because it’s so easy to hang them on the wall. They become even more abstract on the wall, so I wasn’t against it.”

White Clay, Mixed media on paper, 2008, 49 x 38 in.

Chester County, Painted aluminum, 2008, 47 x 35.875 in.

Irrigation Pattern, Painted steel, 2008, 30 x 22 in.

Photo credit: Kyle Juron

“I didn’t want to make them look like they were architectural models without the architecture. That’s the one thing I leave out, I never put any man-made structures into them. To me, they were important almost more as fanciful drawings, but in a way they come out of that commission for the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind). That sculpture is in much higher relief and I think of it as a conglomeration of little pieces of sculpture sitting on top of a table. That was unlike anything I had ever done before or since, but it was done specifically so that blind people could experience it. I worked a lot with Euclid Herie, then CEO of the CNIB, to try to find out how far a blind person can touch and build an image in their mind, and not to make the shapes so large that the images get away on them. They can go around the tabletop and reconnect with the forms from the other side. In fact it’s fun watching people move around the sculpture, touching the pieces as they go. It was amazingly successful. So that to some extent also led me to try these reliefs for sighted people.”

— Interview with Robert Murray in Jonathan Lippincott’s book

“Robert Murray Sculpture”