1053 Gallery: Melissa Murray: “Light Lives as an Animal”

Light Lives as an Animal is a body of night paintings rooted in the forests of the Catskills, where native plants and animals emerge through darkness guided by instinct, memory, and subtle illumination. She paints observation, intuition, and lived experience, attending to the ways light behaves beyond utility, moonlight fire, bioluminescent suggestion, reflect glow, and spiritual or imagined sources. In these paintings, light is not passive; it moves, hides, startles, and watches, behaving as a living presence rather than a fixed phenomenon. Flora and fauna become both subjects and witnesses, existing in a charged nocturnal space where visibility is partial and perception is heightened. The work explores night as a site of vulnerability, reverence, and transformation, honoring the unseen rhythms of the Catskills Landscape and the quiet intelligence that animates it after dark. 

Light lives as an Animal

An Interview with painter Melissa Murray and gallery director, Monte Wilson at 1053 Gallery

By Alan Powell

Painter Melissa Murray’s solo exhibition at 1053 Gallery in Fleischmanns, New York, explores the mysterious life of the natural world after dark. Murray, who lives in Roxbury, fills her paintings with coyotes, foxes, snakes, bears, native plants and spectral figures. Many of these creatures inhabit landscapes inspired by her own garden and the woods surrounding her home.

During a walk through the exhibition, Murray and 1053 Gallery director Monte Wilson discussed several of the paintings and the ideas that connect them.

One of the works, “Finding Space for the Rest of Time”, depicts Murray’s garden at night. A lily pond, edged with yellow and orange flowers, lies beneath the silhouettes of tall trees and a dark blue sky. A pale blue archway frames a glowing light deeper within the garden.

“This one is a view of my garden at night, and it really is how it looks,” Murray said. “I enjoy the garden at night—the lights, the shapes and the things that can come out of it. There are creatures there. Maybe there are, and maybe there aren’t.”

The archway can be interpreted as a threshold or portal connecting one place—or one period of time—to another. Murray said she was trying to capture the spirit of light at night: the way it moves, changes and appears to bleed into the surrounding darkness.

The forms within the painting suggest not only physical movement but also the presence of spirits. The garden is recognizable, yet it feels as though something hidden is preparing to emerge from it.

Coyotes and Native Plants

Murray described “What It Was Worth” as the first painting in the series and the work that helped establish its direction. In the painting, a coyote stands near a blue archway framing a white native plant known as white snakeroot.

White snakeroot is highly poisonous, and Murray was attracted to the idea that plants possess their own defenses.

“I thought a lot about how plants can protect themselves from damage, eating or picking,” she explained.

The coyote carries a similar ambiguity. It can be understood as a trickster, a threat or a watchful steward of the landscape. Murray does not portray coyotes as particularly friendly, but neither does she reduce them to villains.

“They make me feel alive,” she said. “They’re really amazing.”

Coyotes appear repeatedly throughout the exhibition. The animals and plants in these paintings are drawn from Murray’s garden and the surrounding woods, with particular attention given to species native to the region.

While Wilson was installing the exhibition, he temporarily left one of Alan’s  deer sculptures in the middle of Murray’s coyote paintings. Surrounded by coyotes, the deer suddenly appeared remarkably vulnerable. Murray thought the unexpected grouping worked so well that she would have been happy to leave the sculpture there.

A Snake in the Flowers

“A Cosmic Dream Baby Rides the Mountain Channels “ depicts a baby milk snake moving through young black-eyed Susans at night. Murray found the snake outside her studio and incorporated it into the painting.

The small creature is presented as part of a larger, almost cosmic landscape. Although the subject comes from an encounter close to home, its title and composition transform the snake’s journey into something dreamlike and monumental.

The painting’s negative space particularly appealed to Wilson. The sparse flowers, darkness and solitary snake create a composition that is both minimal and mysterious.

“There’s something nice about the use of negative space around the flowers and then just the snake,” Wilson said. “It really ticks all the boxes.”

Keepers in the Night

Wilson was also drawn to “The Keepers of the Wild Light”, a small painting containing four ghostlike figures and a streak of light in front of a silhouetted forest.

“I like this one in particular because of the figures and the idea of the keepers of the wild light,” he said. “I love the sky and the contrast of the night with the blue.”

The figures seem to belong to the landscape while simultaneously existing outside it. They might be guardians, spirits or momentary forms created by light and darkness.

In Breathe, Gasp, Sleep, Dream, Wake, Gasp, Sleep, Dream, Wake, black-eyed Susans glow beneath what appears to be a meteor shower. The night surrounding them is almost completely dark, yet the flowers remain intensely illuminated.

“There’s something about the meteor shower and how well the flowers work at night,” Wilson observed. “You have this contrast: Why is there so much light when it is such a dark night? I think she really captured that.”

Between Two Perspectives

Another major work, “Breathing Through the Petrichor, the Universe Edges the Deep, Deep Soil”, presents an aerial view of a fox wandering beside a stream. Two blue forms descend along the left and right sides of the painting, appearing first as drapery and then transforming into trees along the water. Yellow circles follow the fox’s downward movement, suggesting phases of the moon.

Wilson described it as one of the exhibition’s most polished pieces. He was especially interested in its vertical movement and the way the drapery leads the viewer’s eye toward the creek.

The painting appears to contain two perspectives simultaneously. The viewer looks down from above while also seeming to look upward from the stream. The blue forms shift between trees, fabric and theatrical curtains, making the landscape feel like both a natural environment and a stage.

The fox crosses a shadow and enters what appears to be an invisible plane. Light falls on the animal and the creek from an uncertain source, adding to the sense that the fox is moving between different realms.

The Mother Tree

Wilson selected “The Mother Tree “ for the exhibition postcard. The painting features an inverted, dark, leafless tree against a deep blue field. Two nipples appear approximately three-quarters of the way up the canvas. They can also be seen as eyes or shimmering moons.

Wilson said the painting reminded him of the cover art used for science-fiction novels in the 1960s.

“It reminds me of a period, but it has nothing to do with that period,” he explained. “I love that it is essentially two-tone—the blue and the black.”

Alan Powell’s  first impression was of a tree reflected in water. “Before recognizing the nipples, I saw them as moons”. The composition can also be interpreted as a face or mask.

Wilson did not initially read the blue field as water, but he could see how the inverted tree might suggest a reflection. That openness is central to the painting. It remains simultaneously a tree, a body, a face, a reflection and a graphic arrangement of blue and black.

“There are a lot of different elements going on, but it’s a very simple painting,” Wilson said. “It’s graphic in nature, almost like graphic design, but it works as a painting on its own.”

A Painting That Slowly Reveals Itself

“A Weary Ursa Major Rests “portrays a sleeping black bear. At first, the animal and surrounding vegetation appear to merge into a continuous field of darkness. With time, however, patterns begin to emerge in the bear’s fur and in the leaves and plants behind it.

Wilson admitted that he did not immediately see all the detail, partly because he had first viewed the work in subdued light. As he continued looking, more of the painting revealed itself.

“This is a painting you have to look at and keep looking at,” he said. “More and more keeps coming. More light comes out of it.”

It is, as I observed during our conversation, a painting that grows on the viewer.

That gradual process of revelation can be found throughout Murray’s exhibition. Her paintings invite the eye to adjust to darkness, much as it would outdoors at night. Animals emerge from shadows, flowers give off an unexplained light and familiar garden structures become thresholds leading into unknown spaces.

Wilson believes the strength of the exhibition lies not only in a few individual works but also in the consistency of the entire series.

“I think every painting in the series really works,” he said. “I’m very happy to have this show.”

Murray’s paintings ask viewers to slow down and look carefully. Within their darkness, the garden and forest are never empty. They are inhabited by animals, plants, spirits and shifting light—all waiting to be discovered.