John Murray classes week of May 20, 2013

This week try a piece based on a cartoon or fairy tale character.
Take a look at Paul McCarthy's "Snow White Bookends"...amazing thing...beyond our context and conception, but still based on the fairy tale truisms. When I saw this in Friday's Times I fell in love with the crazy ambition and self-indulgence of McCarthy's work!
His work is gross and clever, beautiful and ugly...I love it.
On Wednesday I (and New Art Center) have an opening at Newtv on Needham Street in Newton at 7 pm.
please come and tell me what you think of my recent paintings, 26 of them in this show.
Thank you Kathleen and Stacy for your instigation, help and consultation on this event.
See you next week. John.

John Murray classes week of May 13, 2013

An interesting young artist...

Trudy Benson’s paintings directly evolve out of her relationship with rudimentary graphic programs such as Windows Paint and Brushes. Her original influence is founded in memories of exploring MacPaint on an old Mac SE as a child. The paintings found in PAINT blend perfectly Benson’s affinity to abstract painting and modern technology while also exploring a dialogue with classical painting motifs such as the venus pudica. There is an interesting hybrid of influence layered within these paintings, which at first glance can appear as a simple collage of abstract information. The artist’s shapes and strokes of the paintbrush adhere to no sense of gravity and a viewer will not find any horizon line to help position him or herself within the work. The longer an individual stands before one of Trudy Benson’s works the more the canvas reveals itself to the viewer a realm which exists uniquely between the digital and physical worlds.

Benson’s paintings like a computer screen contain a strange sense of flattened, shallow space. Yet, her heavy application of paint and materials places a viewer in a visual playground of real and illusionary space, which is not contained in the digital counterpart. The artist’s exploration of space in painting continues with her adaptation of the city’s technique of cleaning up graffiti in neighborhoods, where large paint rollers are used to “paint out” the graffiti. The graffiti removal technique functions similarly to the notion of a ‘portable hole,’ a visual trope that Benson is also engaging in this new body of work. Benson utilizes the masking of an under painting, or censuring like in the venus pudica, to draw more attention and inquiry to what is hidden beneath the newest layer of paint. To unlock this exhibition it is key to make note of the artist’s use of “reductive techniques, which contain an additive value.” There is no edit > undo for Trudy Benson’s paintings. Every layer and texture of the canvas is embraced; each painting rendering an honest tangible representation of it’s own history.

Try moving the origin of your next painting to a different place. See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of May 6, 2013

Spacial development in a painting.

Next week try to push the sense of spaciality in your work.
You can attain this with layering and viscosity changes across the surface: for instance start your work with charcoal drawing, fix and add a layer of translucent wash in a warm color, then repeat charcoal, fix again and move to opaque areas of color...this requires some patience, especially with oil paint, but will provide a sense of space behind the picture plane.
In concert with this exercise go on line and read what Hans Hoffman and Clement Greenberg had to say on this issue.
Illusory space in a painting has been a hotly debated issue since the advent of 20th Century Modernism, but has pretty much fallen by the wayside in the Post Modern era, where anything goes and the flatness versus 3D glasses debate has little place in the radical methods of current art making.
See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of April

Next week please try a piece (painting /drawing/assemblage/construction/installation or phone videos) that make a statement about April/May...

see you next week, john.  

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965)
The Waste Land (1922)

Workers and farmers unite
You have nothing,to lose
But your chains
The world is to win
This is May Day! May!
Your armies are veining the earth!

Railways and highways have tied
Blood of farmland and town
And the chains
Speed wheat to machine
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies veining the earth!

Hirers once fed by the harried
Cannot feed them their hire
Nor can chains
Hold the hungry in
This is May Day! May!
The poor are veining the earth!

Light lights in air blossoms red
Like nothing on earth
Now the chains
Drag graves to lie in
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies are veining the earth!

March comrades in revolution
From hirer unchained
Till your gain
Be the freedom of all
The World's May Day! May!
May of the Freed of All the Earth! 

John Murray classes week of April 22, 2013

We will have a model all classes this week.

Try and use a new medium as well as painting and drawing.

The traditional nude has been worked too much (although sometimes with great success) so as a thinking artist try and push yourself past the familiar and enter new and dangerous territory...of course take the opportunity to draw while we have the model, but try assemblage, collageor printmaking.

Of course painting is encouraged!

See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of April 15, 2013

No classes next week, but I'm having a workshop on Wednesday the 17th from 4:30-8:30 pm.
There will be a model and refreshments will be served (according to Claudia!).
Try and expand your materials into a new vision of plasticity...work with metal, fabric, plaster, wood as well  as canvas and paint. Think about it, please.
See you then, john.

John Murray classes week of April 8,2013

We will have a model all classes the week of April 25th. Also I am planning a workshop April 17 (the week of vacation)... it will run from 4:30-8:30 pm will have a model and will emphasis multi-media: collage/transfer/paint/assemblage and printmaking from a model. Registration is open now on this with Claudia in the office.

Next week let’s try a newspaper piece either paper mâché or transfer or collage with paint over. See you next week John