Elizabeth Murray

Murray belongs to a generation of artists who reintroduced imagery and gestural mark-making to the predominantly cool, reductive aesthetic of the 1970s. This drawing was made during the year in which she began presenting recognizable subject matter, and its repeated circular forms are reminiscent of the abstract spirals of her previous work. The exuberance with which she depicts the coffee cup is characteristic of her best pieces, as is the unusual shape of the sheet. One might venture to see her fascination with spills, a recurring theme in her work, as a nod to the action of Pollock’s drip technique.