John Murray Classes week of Dec.13, 2010

All classes:

This is the last week of the term, if you want to bring work for crit, please do.

Otherwise try a work based on the Winter Solstice, which is only a week away. Having the Sun at its lowest point on the horizon has always produced some strange human behavior (not the least of which is Christmas!). Try a painting, assemblage or sculpture that conveys the darkness of the days and nights this time of years or go in the opposite direction as the woman above did. See you next week, john.

John Murray Classes week of Dec.6, 2010

Identity: name and attitude:

try a few small (14"x20"?) paintings around your name, face or other identity ideas you have about yourself. Here are 2 of mine. One of the great things about making art is the opportunity it gives you to indulge and explore yourself in fresh and unique ways. Try different techniques:

transfer a photo of yourself, do a loose poured acrylic version of your name? See you next week. john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 29, 2010

All classes:

Try a dead-pan holiday greeting-card painting or ironic decorative object.

Use the medium you're working in a

studied obvious way.

see you next week, john.

John Murray classes Monday Nov. 22

Happy Thanksgiving!
Monday classes only this week.
The NewArt Center is closed all day on wednesday.
Acrylic and Oil Workshop and Post Modern Assemblage:
try developing an image based on the Northeast American Indian. For instance, the Wampanoag people from their postmodern casinos back to Metacom and King Philips War to the tribal culture before European contact...
a tragic and fascinating history full of objects and carvings of great power.
see you Monday...john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 15, 2010

All classes this week: Matisse again.

i can't get enough of this brillant artist, a constant inspiration to me.

His "French Window at Collioure" from 1915 is a redux of a 1905 painting, "Collioure", which is full of color and redolent with a rich range of floral and nautical Fauvism.

In this work he discards all romance and decorativeness for stark mystery and viewer participation. This work predates the Minimalist paintings of the late 1960's and 1970's by more than half a century.

Try taking a complex decorative recent piece you have done and strip it to its essence. See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 8, 2010

All classes:
Consider the psycholgical evidence
available to you in your work.
Not in content, but in the process of painting, drawing and assembling the work.
Witness this great Matisse picture, Portrait of Olga Merson from 1911:
here Matisse used layering, scraping, scumbling and bold line to reveal his
mental state and feelings about the subject, a woman with whom he had been in difficult relationship.
Try a work yourself, any subject or an abstraction and stay aware of the medium as language and signifier.
See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of november 1, 2010

This week all painting classes please try a series of small canvases (approx. 12"x 12") using the acrylic paint mixtures we worked with last week.

Try a self portrait, a metaphor and landscape for instance.

Postmodern Assemblage:

Please bring a sheet of plastic and a gallon of acrylic gel. we will try a poured thick acrylic bas relief.

See you next week, john.

John Murray Classes week of Oct.25

Poured acrylic workshop.

If you want to work with a new way of using acrylic paint and medium i will work with you this week.

It requires some specific supplies; however.

1. At least a gallon of acrylic gel.

2. Acrylic paint tubes or jars of color.

3. 4-6 clean empty plastic buckets (with lids is preferable).

4. A stretched canvas and/or a sheet of 2 mil clear poly (drop cloth).

5. a few empty plastic squeeze bottles.

i would like to work with all classes on this and hope all will be able to participate.

Thank you, see you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of October 18 2010

All classes: work a political idea into a painting or assemblage.
Use newspaper articles and attempt to make the plastic material as important as the message. Francis Bacon did on this famous Papal assault. although dry in use of paint the energy and striated brush strokes make this a great painting. Get mad!
See you next week, john.

Supercharged Painting Wed Oct. 13

Work with a landscape reference, but discard the picturesque.

Using some of the brush stroke work you developed last week see how little of the actual landscape you can retain and still feel the sense of nature you began with.

If you have a sketch book use a drawing from that or go out and work or sketch around the New Art Center to start the painting.

See you on wednesday.

-john.

What happened to the brush stroke?

John Murray classes week of Oct. 4, 2010.

The evolution of the brushstroke from Manet to

Impressionism, the Fauvres, Modernism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Post-Modernism is something every artist should consider in their own struggle with their work. Let's try a piece (or pieces ) that explore the range and tools of mark-making.

All painting classes, please bring a few canvases and any implement that can be used to apply paint, in addition to brushes of all widths and degrees of stiffness and softness.

Post-Modern Assemblage, in our work what constitutes the brush stroke? is it 200,000 clear plastic straws, as is sometimes the case in Tara Donovan's work? Glue spots across a rusted steel plate? Folded pieces of packing cardboard and spray paint? Please give it some thought.

See you next week. john.

Artist's Identity

Demonstrate who you are.
Or think you could be.
All artists struggle with this issue,
so try a piece using any medium, from traditional
paint on canvas to found metal scraps and cardboard.
How complex are you?
What does this mean to your art and plastic expression?
Maybe you feel that the individuation concept is false, and life is about the specie...however you feel try and find a way to express and even illustrate your idea.
All John Murray classes week of Sept. 26, 2010

John Murray classes week of Sept 20, 2010

Monday Acrylic and Oil Workshop: we have a model... a female model, please bring paint, canvas and charcoal/fixative.

Monday (p.m.)Postmodern Assemblage: painters are allowed to paint in this class and i will work with you as well as experimental sculptors for whom the class was designed...please bring card board and plaster as well as paint to attempt a non-objective assemblage.

Wednesday Supercharged Painting (am): please bring paint and canvas to try a deconstructed painting of objects in the studio.

Wednesday (p.m.) Supercharged painting: we have a female model...please bring paint, charcoal and canvas.

Last class of summer 2010, Sept.1

We have a model, let's see how far we can push the idea

of the nude female.

Matisse did in 1907.

See you wed. john.

Painting is dead?

This week let's try a mask image for painting's corpse.
see you wed at 4:30. -john.

August 18 2010 assignment

This week i'd like to try working 2 canvases at once.

Use one as a self portrait and the other as your palette.

see you on Wed. john.

New poem new picture

Say it's 1952

in the midwest

That's a year and place

for you

you're a brickshithouse

from without

rectangular grey

Within

inside only a

darkredorchid

The last of these was

reported

in Lawrence Kansas

Which this ain't

this is Africa

"ooh man, afuckin'

honkey...there's nowhere

to go without these

muthafuckers without

without white...

A bird from the grass

strobes off

crackin' the railside

chamomile scent

limeposts wave, too

Early August

This is the time of Summer when i first notice the season change to come. Sure it's still high season, but early in the morning and late at night i can feel the turn to come.

The cam that turns the weather is of course the same planetary movement around the Sun, but in my world everything is personal and will be until i die, so the weather and season changes effect me and influence my attitude toward my work and existence.

i'm in a show in Fort Point Channel that opens next Thursday August 12 at 12 Farnsworth St.

at 7pm. see you there?--john.

Summer 2010

Time to work on new approaches to the same old stuff.

Artists and writers have a limited amount of ideas to work with and the battle is to find new ways to broach this material and make it fresh and vital.

Here's a new poem:

DRawing From a SUmmer Day

Blue time road west clear

Dog car stop go back

Scratch lose take back cut

Scrape a grand small moment of start over

Final 2 weeks of Spring term

There are several projects that could help your work, why not try one of them?

1. Write a poem and transfer the typography onto a canvas and work from there.

2.Paper mache bas relief with paint and transfered image.

3. Self portrait in monochrome transfer.

4. Just paint.

see you next week. john.

Crepes and crudites

i have a show in Holliston at Pejamajo Cafe, 770 Washington Street (5084295200), for the month of May. i hope you can drive out here and take a look and enjoy the food as well, if you do please give me a call, 5084887710, and i'll meet you and show you my studio.

John Murray Classes for week of May 3:
i have a model for Mon. am (female nude) anyone who wants more work with model is invited to come and join the group.
All other classes (Mon.pm, Postmodern and all day Wed Supercharged painting) please continue with the acrylic transfers and consider a paper mache relief object. Thank you-john.

All John Murray Classes week of April 26, 2010

Let's try an acrylic transfer to canvas, paper or wood.

When Rauschenberg did his transfers to canvas he used highly-toxic materials such as xelene, with the method i use non-toxic acrylic gel and photocopies are used and the effects are excellent.

i would like all classes to try this as an under- painting setup that can be worked over and incorporated into an image or object with either acrylic or oil paint, wood, plaster or paper mache. Materials needed are acrylic gel, either wood panel, stretched canvas or heavy paper (hot press) and black and photo copies that you want to incorporate into your piece.

Thanks, see you next week...john.

Murray classes week of April 12 2010

We will have a model all day Wednesday, for both sections of Supercharged painting.
A nude female model, please bring a large canvas, a pad of newsprint and the usual paints and materials you normally use.
Monday painting class and Postmodern Assemblage will not have a model this week, so please continue to work on last week's work.
Cori and i are trying to find a model for Monday the 26th, since New Art Center is closed for Patriots Day on the 19th.

John Murray Spring Classes

Thank you for signing up for my classes.
All painting classes please bring a pad of tracing paper or newsprint, basic acrylic paints (primaries and black and white), a large amount of acrylic gel, a medium size canvas (18"x26?) and a poem about a powerful life experience.
Postmodern Assemblage please bring the same as above as well as material for paper mache and wire for an armature. See you then, john.

Death to Ear of Van Gogh

All John Murray classes week of March 15 and 22nd.

Try and finish all projects (currently 3-part repetition piece.

If finished try to write a poem about something powerful that happened in your life and incorporate that idea or language into a painting. here's mine:

CaR CRaSH July, 1959

When i picked it up

In Dearborn

From grinning Ford guy late

Afternoon

Top down gassed it east

No thought of sleep only sun

Set flow to night Poconos GW

Bridge 125th Street

Large black man peering

Down at white kid in new

White-on-white T'bird

Then sun-hammered head on

Mass Turnpike

Entered a room of dreams

Stars, stars, glass, glass... STARS!

Came to beneath car gas fumes

Permeating oily grass/glass pebbles

How can i fix this thing?

Some bodyshop tradeschool/kid/friend

To bring such a folded mess to

Now?

Hurt but not dead that day.

Someday, though.

The Biennial 2010

All John Murray classes week of March 1, 2010.
This week the only suggested assignment is to follow this link: www.nytimes.com/design/thebiennial and read the fabulous (?) account that today's NY Times has printed to lead its art section.
i would consider traveling to New york and seeing the show as a class/group if anyone is willing to help set up such a trip.
see you Mon/Wed. john.

John Murray classes week of Feb 22, 2010.

Supercharged Painting (Wed. am)and Oil &Acrylic Workshop (Mon.) am:

The assignment this week is to develop a painted object/painting/sculptural/piece using sculpture armature wire. It can be wall hanging and closer to painting or fully sculptural (in the round).

Supercharged Painting Wed.pm:

Due to weather cancellation last week, this section is still working on color glazing for previous weeks gel drawings. Please bring oil/and or acrylic

paint and whatever mediums you have for this class.

Postmodern Graphic Assemblage:

This is the week we will cast our blocks, please bring a small bag of plaster of paris and a sketch/plan of where you would like to go with the final assemblage.

Thank you, john.

Postmodern Graphic Assemblage:

Saw this show last night at Howard Yezerski Gallery.
i've known John Goodman, one of the artists shown, for many years. John's work looked immature and a little too easy, sort of a cool kid having fun with a camera.
In fairness to John, the work is from his 20's and is some of his earliest attempts at street documentation.
Jerry Berndt's pictures seemed to record the area with a journalist's eye and while occasionally strong, seemed more suited for a newspaper piece than a gallery show.
Roswell Angier is the artist here.
i was amazed at the clarity and empathy he brought to his subjects.
Each picture was an exquisite document of the life and moment captured. One of the beauties of great photography is its ability to both enshrine and sacrifice its subject to the viewer. i left this show with Mr. Angier's pictures glowing in my mind like fine tough jewels.

John Murray classes at NewArt

Center

Mon. Feb. 7 and Wed. Feb 9.

Mon. Acrylic&Oil Workshop and both SuperCharged Painting sessions on Wed.

This week we are going to paint and glaze the acrylic gel marks you developed last session. Please bring acrylic/oil paint and any mediums that you have and want to try.

Postmodern Graphic Assemblage

Mon. pm Feb. 7

This week we should complete and proof the lino block you started last mon. see you then. -john

Artist unknown...

is often the credit given on the art i most enjoy.

After visiting the Hirshhorn in Washington, Site Santa Fe in New Mexico and any number of smaller venues for the display of art, i realized that i'm generally most affected by the work of anonymous artists. Whether ancient or contempory, i find the power of the object out of context of a body of work and ego to be more eccentric and powerful. Is this my anti-social stance on most things acceptable to the art and political world, or is this the real power of the things that live outside of that dialogue? Perhaps it has something to do with my youthful LSD experiments and admiration for the 1950's iconic "Born to Lose" tattoos.

Mary and Sandy at Joshua Tree
what a trip! The art in Sante Fe, the road and the desert combined to open new neuro-pathways for dog and us.

Late afternoon the air at Joshua Tree feels like tiny particles of cool energy.

All the museum art i've seen driving from Boston, in D.C. and Sante Fe, pales by comparison to this amazing visceral and conceptual moment.