We were lucky to catch up with Leslie Murphy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Leslie, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I’ve ever done has been my “Not Just a Number” portrait series. Over the course of the last few years, my primary focus has been creating memorial word portraits for families experiencing loss due to gun violence and or covid. I wanted to create a series that was collaborative in nature and that also reflected my values of kindness, empathy, and compassion. Each participating family worked together to complete a detailed questionnaire about their lost loved one, and to select photographs to use for a portrait. I then took those words and photos and made hand drawn and painted portraits featuring all of the text provided. The end result is that anyone viewing the artwork would get a very real sense of the actual person who lost their life. I wanted to bring humanity back to the discussion about gun violence and about covid deaths. Too often we are all overwhelmed by the sort of “white noise” of tragedy in our 24-hour news cycle. So much so that it becomes difficult to connect these headlines and statistics to actual people, and actual families mourning those people. Having gone through gut wrenching losses myself and using art as a way to cope with grief, I wanted to extend that gift to others. Tired of feeling angry, and helpless, I decided to reach out to those who had lost loved ones to gun violence and offer to make pro-bono portraits for this series. I then took a much-needed mental health break from these portraits prior to covid. Once covid hit, and the death toll began to climb I decided to reach out to families who’d lost family to covid and make portraits for them as well. Thus far I have made 70 portraits memorializing lives lost to these epidemics. I am currently wrapping up this series and working on the last few portraits. Making these portraits has been a deeply moving and profound experience for me. Not only does it remind me to be grateful for my own life and the lives of my family, but it has also given me a great sense of purpose, while allowing me to set an example of compassion for my two children. I had the great pleasure of learning about lives from all over the country, from all races, ages, and walks of life, and to show them how powerful art can be in our lives and in our grief. The biggest takeaway from this series has been that regardless of how divided our society may seem, that we are not so different. There were so many commonalities from person to person. There were so many families who shared the same values of kindness, love for family and community, and much more.

Leslie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been an artist for as long as I can remember. Making art has always been both a compulsion and a great comfort. I have been teaching painting and drawing for the last 16 years. It is a profession that I kind of stumbled into but found to be enriching and exciting. It has allowed me the flexibility to be a working mom, and to pursue other artistic avenues. I find great satisfaction in watching my students grow and progress as artists, while cheering them on with enthusiasm! I have had the pleasure of teaching students as young as 4 and as old as 98, at all skill levels. I am currently teaching oil and acrylic painting, and portrait painting at Johns Creek Arts Center. Sharing my passion for painting has been an incredible experience, and I don’t plan to stop any time soon. My next venture in painting instruction will be developing online painting courses so that I may share my love of teaching to a wider audience. In addition to teaching painting, I worked as an illustrator for local self-published authors. After a while my primary focus became making portraits. I started out with an idea to paint my daughter each year of her childhood to document her growth through paintings. This is something I’m still doing but am way behind as I now have a son to make portraits of too lol. In addition to painting my family, I paint portraits on commission as well as pro bono for causes that I feel strongly about. I strive to bring not just attention to detail and likeness to each of my portraits, but also to bring a sense of contemporary uniqueness that reflects each of my portrait subjects.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I have found the most rewarding aspect of being an artist to be sharing my passion with others. As a painting teacher, helping aspiring artists learn the tools of the trade and guiding them through the painting process is something that brings me great joy and satisfaction. Seeing that spark ignite when a student accomplishes something new and knowing that I helped them get there is such a great feeling. As a portrait artist, capturing someone’s likeness and personality for the purpose of sharing their life with others has been immensely rewarding. Whether it be the portraits I have made of those near and dear to my heart, or the memorial word portraits, it is always wonderful to share this work. In the case of the “Not Just a Number” portrait series it was such a moving experience to help others process their loss with my art. The gift of the portrait itself for grieving families was a huge part of the art, but it was also a gift to me in many respects. It taught me so much in terms of how to live my own life gratitude, compassion, and empathy. I think my favorite part of making art is giving it away…It’s a terrible business model though!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I do have a very simple mission that drives me as a creative professional. And that is to make a living in a way that brings me joy, and that reflects my values as a person. While I of course strive to build a career that allows me to thrive financially, it is far more important that I enjoy my work. After all, 40 hours a week is a huge chunk of your life, and it’s critical to enjoy that time, or at least to enjoy it more often than not.

Contact Info:

• Website: lesliemurphyarts.com
• Instagram: @lmurphyarts
• Linkedin: Leslie Murphy
• Other: patreon.com/lesliemurphyarts