'Hardcore' by Judith Murray is part of The Studios of Key West's 'Painting/Place' exhibit Feb. 3-26. CONTRIBUTED

By Hays Blinckmann for The Studios of Key West

On the advice of famed artist and art dealer Betty Parson, in 1980 Judith Murray and Robert Yasuda left New York City for the winter to paint, enjoy the sun and rejuvenate from weighty careers. That is how two extraordinary artists came to find Key West and for decades created their work anonymously in studios from Old Town to Big Pine and Sugarloaf. 

Working quietly, hidden by palms and mangroves, their paintings went on to hang in museums and galleries worldwide. Murray’s works were recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yasuda’s installations featured at MoMA PS1 and the MCA Chicago. 

The pair is now showing 25 years’ worth of work for Key West to enjoy in their second-ever joint show and their first in Key West. 

It’s not often that Keys residents can experience museum-quality paintings without leaving the island, but The Studios of Key West will showcase this must-see exhibit for any art lover from Feb. 3-26.

Meeting with Murray and Yasuda, I was struck by their quiet but formidable presence. They have the thoughtful eyes of observers and the presence of craftsmen who know their trade. Unlike the large, bold works they have created, both are surpassingly slight in frame.

They speak softly and patiently, describing their work and process as they have for countless others with far better credentials than I: The New York Times, LA Times and ART news. 

Still, we made connections about Key West, art, painting and one therapeutic revelation that yes, I absolutely was correct to dislike a certain artist (and quit on him in my 20s).

 I discovered Murray and Yasuda were like any of us who had found themselves on an island and just wanted space and time to create without the hustle of the real world. They had visions inside them that needed their hands, color and paint to form.

Murray and Yasuda have maintained side-by-side careers, working alone but together in New York and Key West while traveling the world to find inspiration. Their work both compliments and maintains a distinct individuality, an unspoken marriage of two artists. 

Murray’s gestural paintings differ from Yasuda’s quiet, calmer color fields. But together,  they act as two distinct voices speaking to each other, while the audience, mere silent bystanders, are happy just to listen. 

Murray’s work is the best of the expressionist painting movement. With tempered control and technique like predecessors Joan Mitchell or Gerhard Richter, her paintings are romantic, stormy, vibrant and surprisingly ordered. Each stroke of paint is applied with thought as to its placement, its thickness, its architecture on canvas – like any great composer, she creates a balancing act of craft and intuition that appears effortless. The paintings become worlds of organized color and symmetry. Imagine cherry blossoms falling in the wind or water rushing over a pebble bed, the work captures the essence of movement in nature.  

A single painting may take months, although Murray only uses four colors — red, yellow, black and white. “They are universal colors similar to earthy cave paintings that also used four,” she said. “I’ve never felt limited by working this way. It’s still challenging and expanding with time.” Her works are filled with tones and variations of her limited palette but with infinite possibilities of color and strokes, like a symphony rewritten repeatedly with the same notes but a different sound every time. Also, Murray begins each painting with a single vertical bar placed on the right — look for it — as a starting point between the physical world and the fictional one she will create. She has freed the canvas from the constraint of landscape and a horizon line allowing the image to flow over each corner like the burst of an idea.

Alternately, Yasuda approaches his work more quietly, akin to predecessor Mark Rothko. His palette has a cooler sense, more blues, and greens, forgoing visible strokes and opting for layer upon layer of all-over color. Some paintings can have 30 to 40 layers of paint, sanded and repainted. The result is a luminosity that reveals itself in a different light. The work begs for attention, or else one will miss the subtlety of color that unveils happily over time. Like the light in nature that changes moment by moment, Yasuda draws the viewer in to see what will happen next. 

His canvases are paired with wooden panels, different shapes, and sizes, firmly rooting their ethereal quality to the wall or the ground, altar-like. “It’s the notion of seeing. The results are layered and hidden. Overall, it takes a while to reveal itself. Color decisions have to do with the reveal,” said Yasuda. He is a thoughtful speaker, choosing his words and conveying his message with calmness, un-rushed much like his paintings. 

While the two artists respectfully do not force comparisons between their work, Murray agreed, “We feel the basis in nature in both our paintings.”  

And both feel the basis of themselves in Key West, a home they deeply appreciate for allowing them to work, all these years, on their own. Yasuda captures the sentiment many of us share, “There is something about the chemistry of this place.”