Kate MacGarry is pleased to present Aimée Parrott as part of CONDO London 2026, shown alongside paintings by Deborah Hanson Murphy from Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles. Both artists bring distinct and contrasting approaches to painting, variously rooted in material experimentation, attentiveness, and a shared interest in evoking the natural world on an elemental level.
In Parrott's 'The green fuse drives the flower', pulsing waves of purple and lilac are encircled by mossy greens and deep crimson rivulets. Titled after a Dylan Thomas poem, brush marks vibrate, evoking matter transforming at speed, at once a landscape, cell division, or petals opening—the force that drives growth also denotes impermanence and fragility. A pink cloud blooms in 'Radiating Affection', its coral and rose hues edged with soft, luminous tones. Inspired by Annie Besant’s 1905 theosophical book 'Thought-Forms', it's contours reverberate outwards, embodying emotion as a visible field of energy.
Parrott’s practice explores the relationship between painting, printmaking, and material transformation. Her process combines monotype printing, dye, appliqué, staining, and stitching, producing surfaces that bear the physical imprints of time, gesture, and touch. Forms emerge, recede, and reconstitute through accumulated layers, allowing the works to evolve rather than resolve.
Aimée Parrott was born in 1987 in Brighton, UK, where she currently lives and works. Recent solo exhibitions include Waterborne, Parafin Gallery, London (2023) and Whitehawk Camp, Mackintosh Lane, London (2022). Recent group exhibitions include After Nature, curated by Ben Tufnell, Close Gallery, Somerset (2025); Softly Radiant, Half-Buried, curated by Martyn Cross, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2025); Thresholds, Larsen Warner, Stockholm, Sweden (2025); Thread Suns with Anna Higgins, Ione & Mann, London (2025); Unreal City: Abstract Painting in London, curated by Dominic Beattie and Samuel Cornish, Saatchi Gallery, London (2024); The Language of Line, Lyndsey Ingram, London (2024) and Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK (2022).
Born in Stockton, CA in 1931, Deborah Hanson Murphy studied at Stanford and the Art Students League in New York and then eventually settled down in Paris where she spent the majority of her life as a serious artist. She began painting what she would call her Variations (still lives) around 1974, which she continued until her death in 2018. In these paintings, lean and airy compositions revolve around a seemingly stable lexicon of elements (shells, leaves, etc) which are articulated along an implied horizon in empty monochromatic fields of sienna, gray, light mauve or beige.
While the structure remains consistent throughout her work, the paintings become increasingly rarified, reductive and abstracted as she progresses. Her approach to painting was methodical and obsessive; she would often revisit a single work up to ten times over a decade, notating the year on the back each time she did so. However, anything but obsessive or ambivalent, her imagery ultimately radiates an uncanny certitude. For all their apparent classicism, her rigorous and meditative pictures feel as fresh and contemporary as anything being made today.
Deborah Hanson Murphy (b. 1931, Stockton, CA; d. 2018, Paris, France) lived and worked in Paris, France. Solo exhibitions include Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris (2023); Espace culturel de Sully-sur-Loire, Loiret (2011–12); Galerie Emeric Hahn, Paris (2011); Galerie Darial, Paris (1991, 1987) and Galerie Valmay, Paris (1981). Group exhibitions include Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris (1988–2009); Feingarten Galleries, Los Angeles, CA (1982); Small Works Competition, New York University, New York (1985) and Salon des Femmes, Paris (1978–1992).
