At the Painted Bride Art Center, artist Deirdre Murphy shares a vast swath of her complex, patterned paintings in a solo show entitled “Murmurations.” Presented by InLiquid, the many explosive canvases of abstract shapes, layers and flocks of birds provide a sensory feast inside of the Bride’s Café Gallery that both mimics and defies nature.

Deirdre Murphy, “Radiance.”

Murphy uses her recent paintings as a means to capture the energy and activity found in the recognizable, yet maddeningly complicated images of birds in migration or headed to their roosts. Like colonies of ants or beehives, these gigantic formations are the result of many disparate individuals acting together in one group. The artist says she is interested in the collective intelligence found in bird flocks.“I am fascinated by the rules that guide the collective swarm to pulse, shift and change,” says Murphy, “What creates this uncanny, beautiful coordination of these birds?”

While her questions may be rhetorical, her artwork does a powerful job of conveying these incredible biological manifestations. In her piece entitled “Radiance”, Murphy explores these concepts through rays of light which pierce through heavily layered textures of pastel blues, pinks, and grays. Dark violet colored birds top off the montage, their silhouetted wings frozen in mid-flight flaps as they head together toward an unseen destination.

Deirdre Murphy, “Convection Current I.”

In “Convection Current I,” a bird of prey soars, its impressive wingspan fully visible against the sunset hues of pink and peach around it. The trail of this raptor and its kin in the sky are traced by winding loops of thick blue, red and orange lines, which sweep like the invisible currents of air that carry these creatures through their transits, far above us earth-dwellers. By visualizing these hidden paths in our atmosphere, Murphy provides insight into a world rarely pondered outside of the realms of pilots and ornithologists.

Deirdre Murphy, “Drifting Winds” (top) and “Day Break Song” (bottom).

Horizontal, landscape renderings elsewhere in the show depict panoramic views of gigantic plumes that, resembling clouds of smoke, are actually composed of many feathered animals commuting through the air at dusk or dawn. Below, trees, houses and other terrestrial fixtures appear dwarfed in pieces such as “Day Break Song.” Mingling with these formations in the sky are geometric shapes and wispy pathways that are by far the most abstract elements of the exhibit. Murphy provides the most realistic scenes here, while simultaneously splicing them with the most unreal elements – giant blocks of solid color, circles and diamond shapes that drift silently amidst the otherwise true-to-life images.

These quietly energetic paintings by Deirdre Murphy will be on view at the Painted Bride for quite some time – through October 20. There will be an additional First Friday opening at the space on October 4 from 5-7 p.m.

Painted Bride Art Center is located at 230 Vine St., Philadelphia; [email protected]; paintedbride.org.