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My mother was a wonderful artist and I "knew" I couldn’t do what she did, because I had convinced myself I couldn’t paint. When I was 15, I went to the fabric store for the first time make a skirt for a high school Home Ec class. I felt like I was looking at a room full of brightly colored brushes and gorgeous canvas. I had found my ‘paint’. My quilting was self-taught for many years while I made myself happy with the colors and patterns I sewed together. The truth is, I was actually becoming more expert with my seam ripper than I was with my sewing machine. In the 1970s I devoured books about Victorian quilts, pioneer women’s quilts, and African quilts. The more I studied quilt patterns, the more I saw them everywhere. I attended our local quilt fair every year without fail, sure I would never make anything good enough to exhibit. My quilts were slowly getting better in technique and more personal in nature, but I was still frustrated at not having the skills to transform my interior vision into the piece I wanted to make.
Soon after that class I made my Matisse quilt, "Blue Eyes" for a challenge from my local guild. I not only used what I learned in the class at Tahoe, but that wall hanging was shown in the quilt show with the other challenge quilts. My first art quilt got me a lot of attention from other quilters, but more importantly, it was exactly how I wanted it to look. Communicating my vision with others was so exciting I’ve been back to Art Quilt Tahoe every year to take another artist’s class. I’ve been fortunate to take classes from some of the world’s best artists in my field. All the art quilts on this web site are my from own designs or photographs (except where noted). Some have been accepted into juried quilt and fiber art shows and have won multiple awards. My quilt education has lead me into machine piecing, hand appliqué, fusing, and most recently, painting. The irony of this is that I began my artistic life as a quilter because I thought painting was too difficult, and now I get great satisfaction from painting on fabric. My work is still evolving while I continue to search for my own voice in my art. I read and appreciate all comments and feedback left on this site. Thank you for viewing my work. Ben Lomond, CA
Linda Murphy Art Quilts
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I discovered the new field of Art Quilting from the quilt magazines I read in
the 1980s and 90s. The ‘craft’ of quilt making was becoming an art form in front
of my eyes. Amazing colorful and imaginative pieces with original designs were
showing up on the covers of art books, and famous galleries were holding shows
of just quilts. The change in my own quilting came about when I attended
a week-long workshop at .jpg){kind=link}