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Elizabeth Murray:
The whole thing is so scatological.

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When you're painting, it's like so 
physical.

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It's really physical.

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You're squeezing the paint out of the tube
which is fun.

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You're mixing up the paint.

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It's making something happen with a very 
sort of fluid material that is constantly

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somewhat out of control, harnessing it 
somehow, harnessing that energy of the

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paint. I think that's the primary thing 
that painting is about.

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For a couple of years I've been working
with cutting out shapes

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and kind of glomming them together.

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You know, like basically making a zigzag
shape and making a sort of

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rectangular shape and a circular bloopy 
fat cloudy shape and just putting them all

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together and sort of letting the cards 
fall where they may.

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I know the shapes are always referred to 
as cartoony.

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And they are cartoony and bumpy and 
rounded

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and inflated and sort of wacky.

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All of these shapes are stuck on to each 
other in some kind of way.

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Sort of like a weird fence or a weird 
lattice.

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Another part of it for me is to use very 
intense color.

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With the color and with the shape 
and with the drawing inside of the shape

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really it's just simply trying to make it 
work somehow.

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There are so many different combinations 
of things.

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It's like being a safe breaker and you're 
listening to the-

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those movies where they've got their ear 
up against the safe and you are listening

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for the right click for the right 
cylinders to like drop down.

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Sometimes it's felt really like that, 
like I'm just like painting

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and painting until the right thing 
happens.

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I want there to be conflict and I

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want there to be tension.

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And yet somehow I want to make these 
very conflicting things live together,

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and not just butt up against each other
but really live together.

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I do drawings inside the book.

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And they're just kind of like warm-up to 
get my mind into it.

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You know like to give myself some, 
some place to start from,

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that's really all they are.

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It all starts with drawing.

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I think the thing I remember the most 
is, when I was little was,

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the excitement of being able to draw 
something.

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I loved to draw, and I did obsessively.

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I guess I kind of realized that it was a 
skill that made me feel good about myself.

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The Art Institute in Chicago totally 
changed my life.

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There were people there, the likes of whom
I'd never seen before,

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in little Bloomington, Illinois.

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I absolutely feel in love with that 
world.

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But I think as much as I wanted to be 
an artist,

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I wanted to be different the way they 
were different.

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Because it felt like freedom.

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Instead of being trapped in your little 
Pendleton skirt and your bobbysocks,

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and your saddle shoes, you could wear 
big heavy black boots and put blue

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makeup on and just, you know, say 
what you thought.

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You didn't have to be a nice lady
anymore.

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But the teachers seemed to be there
to teach you that you had no hopes

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and no prospects, and being an artist was
one of the most impossible things in the

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world.

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And you'd better realize that this was a 
life of suffering, struggle, and you

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weren't going to be any good anyway.

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I had to really find a way to believe in
myself.

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You know, I think I did it by looking at
the paintings in the galleries in Chicago.

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I would go everyday and I would look at

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this particular DeKooning painting called
Excavation, and I would almost like

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do a dance with it.

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Like, oh, he went this way

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and oh he went that way,

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and oh he smudged this and feeling

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like the depth of that painting.

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When you look at it from a distance it

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looks like this roiling boiling pot of 
paint kind of.

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Except the order is in that paint.

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And when you go up to it you begin to see

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like the layers of it, and I sort of

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deconstructed the painting

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and I would go back down to my painting

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and I would try to do it.

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I never got that good, but it made me

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start to feel my body and my mind.

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My mind letting my arm make the decision.

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And when you start to get the control then
your feelings can start to flow.

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And once that starts to happen, it's 
like you know, you get on

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the track and the trains starts moving.

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I just realized this was going to be 
my life.

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I really need time by myself, and I
always have.

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And I think when I was a kid I actually 
liked to play by myself a lot.

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And that's not saying I don't need 
people because I do.

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I love the quiet of walking into my studio

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and looking at my work and then painting,

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and it just feels like of a piece with
my whole life in a way.

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Having my kids has made me part of the
world as an artist and as someone

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who works in a lot of isolation it's 
really made me deal with life in

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a way that I absolutely wouldn't have.

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It's made me have a life, and take my 
mind off myself.

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That's what they've done for me.

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They'll be more honest with me than 
anybody else will.

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They'll tell me how they feel.

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And not everybody does that.

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DAISY: Which one do you want to talk 
about?

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MURRAY: What, honey?

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MURRAY: This one, yeah.

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So, what I want to know is, I'm trying to 
decide whether to put this in the show.

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And I want to know, just tell me exactly
what you think of it.

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I just made some big changes in it.

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The drawings are different but this is 
what sort of comes out from the drawings.

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SOPHIE: I like it. And I think if you-

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MURRAY: Of course what I wanted you to 
say was it's great,

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it's good, don't touch it, put it in the 
show.

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DAISY: But Mom, even if you couldn't, even
if you were going to

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leave everything the way it was you 
couldn't because it's not like

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nothing except for that and the chair and 
the door, it's nothing, and the sun,

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none of it is done.

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I think, I think that it all just- it 
isn't a bad thing you just,

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the surfaces aren't finished.

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SOPHIE: Are you bored with it?

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MURRAY: No, I'm very interested in it.

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DAISY: Because you don't ever leave 
things like this.

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MURRAY: Yeah, no, I'm going to just keep 
working on it.

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SOPHIE: But maybe that would be 
interesting not, just leaving it.

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MURAY: No, I can't do that. Daisy's right.
You're right, you're right, you're right.

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MURRAY: I think that what I have to do is
take out the bloopy forms and re-

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and just, maybe they will come back and 
maybe they won't, but-

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MURRAY: I think I got to take these out 
for awhile.

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SOPHIE: It might just be nice to see what 
it looks like when it is just,

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you know, blank.

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DAISY: It might be that they are too 
much like the curves in the smoke.

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SOPHIE: Oh, yeah!

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MURRAY: Yeah but then, yeah.

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SOPHIE: I love the smoke.

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I think the smoke is my favorite thing. 
I think I like this red and the pink.

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MURRAY: But what about the marks inside 
the roof tops, the triangles.

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It just feels like, it's very 
descriptive.

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The triangle then becomes the roof, 
you know what I mean?

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It's a representation.

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SOPHIE: I mean that's what it is.

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MURRAY: Yeah, ah-hah.

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SOPHIE: That's the chimney, that's 
the smoke coming out of it,

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that's you know, the little people inside 
of it-

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MURRAY: Be quiet!

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SOPHIE: Of course there is room for 
interpretation I mean that's what your

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work does, but you know there is the 
little people inside that are talking,

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and that is what they are saying 
inside are little speech bubbles.

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MURRAY: Cartoons, speech bubbles. Ohh, 
ok.

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DAISY: I thought it was a path.

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SOPHIE: You thought it was a path?

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DAISY: Hmm-mmm.

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SOPHIE: Oh, it could be a path. See Mom?
We still don't know what it is!

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MURRAY: Ok, that's really good. That's 
really helpful.

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I think every artist has this, you leave 
it at night and you come back in

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the morning and it's gone, like it looks 
awful.

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And that's sort of when I think, "Why did 
I go on this journey in the first place?"

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What am I doing this for? 
It's just, it's so painful."

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And then you know, the next morning you're
back at it bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

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like trying again.

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MURRAT (SOT): Ok, so let's move this 
painting over here.

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MURRAY (SOT): No, don't even hang it up.

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My fantasy is that I would get to a 
certain point where I would know

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what I wanted to say, where you were 
either on this straight line or a road,

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you would never swerve.

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You would just do your work then.

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And that's not the way it is at all.

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You know, get off the path and then 
get back on again for a while

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and you trip along and suddenly you 
stumble and then you're back on again.

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And I don't think that process ever ends.

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MURRAY (SOT): And that height is good.

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More over to the right, center it on the 
wall.

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MURRAY (SOT): Let's switch this with this.

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MURRAY: When I really know certain things 
are working for me,

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they make me laugh.

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Like oh, this is really silly.

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And I just enjoy that.

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And I think for myself it's part of what 
gets me through.

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I think it's really very similar to how a

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kid plays.

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You know, it's like you are in your
playroom

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and you are just picking up these

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different shapes and throwing them on the
wall and then putting them together

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and seeing what kind of a game you can 
make out of them.

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I think that's pretty explanatory of what 
it feels like to make them,

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and very close to the kind of feeling that
I want to get out of them,

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and I think I want you to get out of them
too.