Ten novels about art & artists

Jennifer Murphy holds an MFA in painting from the University of Denver and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the 2013 Loren D.
Milliman Scholarship for creative writing and was a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference from 2008 through 2012. In 2015, her acclaimed debut novel, I Love You More, won the prestigious Nancy Pearl Fiction Award. Her love of art led her to start Citi Arts, a public art and urban planning company that has created public art master plans for airports, transit facilities, streetscapes, and cities nationwide. She hails from a small beachfront town in Michigan and has lived in Denver, Charlotte, Seattle, and Charleston. She currently lives in Houston, Texas.

Murphy's new novel is Scarlet in Blue.

[ Q&A with Jennifer Murphy]

At Electric Lit she tagged ten novels that "do what art itself does best. They intrigue. They seduce. They grab our attention and pull us inside." One title on the list:

The Painter by Peter Heller

Peter Heller tells the story of successful fictional painter Jim Stegner, whose life takes a turn when he shoots a man in a bar for making lewd comments about his daughter, a scene which he later paints in an “explosion of colors.” His marriage has also ended. He leaves New Mexico and starts a fresh life in Colorado where he attempts to lose himself in his paintings and fishing. Heller does an amazing job of using his protagonist’s paintings to reflect the violence of his life. The prose has a clean, hard-boiled detective edge to it, instilling the novel with mystery and urgency.

Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue