Murray Tucker Bio

Boats, seascapes, people and the homes and buildings that have special meaning for them -- these are the foundations of my work as an artist. 

My travels to Guernsey, the home of my family and where I spent many formative years, and my travels throughout Ontario, where I now live and find inspiration, provide the images and impressions that are the subjects of my latest works.

I have a fascination with line, its inward and outward curves, how it separates human from natural space, how it can transmute the physical and visual history of a building or landscape into their present day forms.  My passion for history and the dimensions of line have inspired me to create a series of drawings based on the history of Guernsey during the second world war and how its buildings and landscapes– featured prominently in the novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - exist today, though some of their functions may have changed.

In addition to my Guernsey series, I am often commissioned by my clients to create pen and ink drawings of their homes, their families or a favourite car or boat.  In each drawing, my challenge is to depict the unique personalities of the subjects, the houses that reflect their inhabitants, the cars or boats that record their own histories in the scrapes and scratches of paint or outcroppings of rust or the lacquered brilliance of newness.

For my paintings, I favour acrylic on stretched canvas.  Acrylic allows me to lay washes of colour to reflect depth and atmosphere and it allows me to represent the vagaries of light, its conflict with shadow, and how colours are transformed by both.  

I now live and work in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  Having studied with such established artists as Nan Hogg, Kathleen Schmalz, and Janette Hayhoe, I work out of a studio in Guelph as well as on location.