Artist Statement – Mia Muratori

Statement Excerpts

2026 DARK SKY SERIES

The Dark Sky Reserve spans 15,000 square miles—nearly the size of Switzerland. In this vast darkness the human body recalibrates: cortisol lowers, melatonin rises, perception slows, and the sense of Being expands. Under an unbroken sky the illusion of linear time dissolves; what we call “time” reveals itself as construct—a man-made attempt to measure continuous motion within the eternal now. For thousands of years cultures have lived and thrived within this powerful space as beneficiaries and stewards—ancient desert civilizations, the Jornada Mogollon, the Mescalero Apache, the Comanche, the Buffalo Soldiers—and now us. The sky remains. The model, Mary Powers, is a present-day resident of the Dark Sky Region in the Chihuahuan Desert.

2025 Hook Experiment Exhibit

Oxford, PA -“All Art is Propaganda” George Orwell. WRITING on the WALL. The new series is part of an exploration of human evolution and shifting intelligence. The work is motivated by our relationship to AI, and an awareness of historical geographical colonization. The work discourages anthropomorphizing tech, specifically LLM’s and encourages correct syntax to reserve and preserve human and environmental energy.

Materials: Painting, Video and QR Codes

2024 Building 98 Museum

Exhibition Marfa, TX- “From mineral I became vegetable from vegetable I became animal from animal I became man. What I will become. You cannot imagine. I shall be that.” Rumi 1248. Ruminations on the freedom of thought, of genetic colonization, and of man becoming the missing link punctuate my thoughts as I go about my day recording my diary with paint, charcoal and ink.

2024 OPENINGS
Exhibition St Paul Cathedral, NYC, NY-For me painting is a form of visual diary keeping and documentation. Adding and subtracting elements as I face the mirror/window of the canvas to capture light, space, atmosphere as well as beauty, truth and understanding. My practice includes plein air paintings of Lake George, NY. Through yearly recordings I am noticing the changing atmosphere, space and colors of the water, land and sky, even the cloud formations are changing in shape and color. I am exhibiting two paintings from a series of Lake George paintings. The paintings were painted before, during and after the Canadian fires.

2022 FELLOWSHIP
Exhibition Wilmington, DE-SURVEILLANCE & A SUMMERS DAY Surveillance’s etymology, from Sanskrit to early European, includes concepts of strength, vigor, vision, vigil, wakefulness, watching. Watching is a favorite activity of mine. Watching the world as we transition from an industrial/feudal state to a digital/knowledge/cellular state is what I see. Remaining vigilant of our failures as well as our successes as we travel towards our destiny. I juxtapose observing the manmade world while taking comfort and strength from the natural world. Who, what, where, why, when do we watch and when, why, where, what, who watches us. When does watching become vigilantism, when and where do we hold vigil.

2020 MARFA
Exhibit , Marfa, TX “Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field, I will meet you there” Rumi 1248 Recently I have been thinking of Rumi’s words. Our fields of perception and our divisions have neurological mechanisms. Does the neurological mechanism of division within our physiological makeup control us or do we control the mechanism. My current work of Plein Air is simply looking at and recording the space and light in front of me. Like meditation, I paint while quieting the habitual critical/ questioning side of the mind and find space in the witness/observing side of the mind.