‘I love metal: the smell and the feel, the torch lighting up, the first blow of the hammer’.
A graduate in fine art from the Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design in 1979, Jane Murtagh was one of the last of a generation of students there who were offered an innovative programme of teaching in the applied arts, which the artist Richard Gorman described as ‘based on Bauhaus principles filtered through those of Black Mountain College in America’.
Jane works with non-ferrous metals using the techniques of repousse, forging, etching and gilding to create unique relief sculptural panels. Her inspiration is most often found in the minutiae of the natural and botanical worlds, in corners of it that are often overlooked, like the subtleties of bark, or the microscopic patterns of lichen. Having attended masterclasses in the patination of metals at West Dean College in Sussex, Jane employs this technique to apply subtle finishes to her work that can only be realised on the surface of metal and which are often unique to each piece based on the composition of the metal itself and the somewhat unpredictable effects of certain combinations of materials used. The effects can range from stark contrast, through shifting gradients, to subtle blushes in colour.
Since childhood Jane Murtagh has experienced a ‘confusion’ of senses, now known as synaesthesia, causing ‘the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body’. Music is the background voice to the artist’s life and contemporary jazz the idiom through which much of her work has been realised. In recent years, Jane delved into the work of jazz musician and composer Carole Nelson, the rhythms of which have informed the making of much recent work, and through which the artist has sought to open new possibilities to viewers, encouraging us to explore the boundaries of our perceptions.