Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gregory Malphurs. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Gregory, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Definitely my new series of paintings “Abstract Heads.” We have thousands, maybe millions of thoughts a day. LA is moving fast – we are constantly bombarded with information. Its endless. Perpetual motion. The “Abstract Heads” explore this by interweaving and layers chaotic, gestural marks and strokes and splatters all moving together with energy.

I’ve always been drawn to abstract paintings – I’m not an abstract painter, by any means, but I always wanted to incorporate it into my work, I just never found a way.

The Abstract Heads came to me as an idea when I lived in NYC. One day when I was on the subway on the way to the studio, I was sketching and made this little drawing (show the drawing). It was really just how I was feeling. Overwhelmed, too many thoughts. Fast forward years later, here in my LA studio I was looking for something unrelated in a sketchbook and came across the drawing. Something clicked.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I could draw since I was old enough to hold a pencil and I grew up in my grandfathers studio – that’s the first time I remember being exposed to art. He was a pretty successful portrait painter in Miami, and I was always with him at the studio. So the concept of being an artist, as a person and as a job, is completely natural to me.

I moved to LA from NYC two years ago – the pandemic basically forced me out of NYC. SO I consider myself a Los Angeles artist/painter. The main subject of my work is portraiture. I’m fascinated with what makes us tick – that we are, all of us, fragmented and complicated. Our minds and our lives are moving at 100mph. Like images on a movie screen – in perpetual motion. I look at this body of work as a recognition of our commonality in total confusion. An celebration of the imperfect that allows us to embrace our insecurities without judgement with the idea that: “Yeah, we’re all fucked up, but we’re doing the best we can.”

My solo show “Perpetual Motion” is currently running at Speedy Gallery LA through August 19th.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Any artist can tell you that in our line of work you hear an overwhelming amount of “NO”s. And that can make hard to persevere. It takes a lot of self confidence and focus to push beyond constant rejection and believe in what you are doing. To keep showing up at the studio every day to follow the myriad paths your creativity takes you down. And to realize that there really is no end to those paths, they just lead to other paths. And that real success is ebing able to walk on this earth as someone who creates – a creator.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Do they still have those? NFTs were a fad. I guess the thing that stood out to me, when they were around and popular, was the lack of quality. The vast, vast majority of the images were very poor. I guess the good part was that it offered an additional platform for artists to sell work – albeit briefly.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gregorymalphursart.com
• Instagram: @gregorymalphurs