John murray classes week of Feb. 28, 2011

The Province Town dunes and obscure old Delta blues.

i spent wed and thurs of last week in ProvinceTown and hiked for miles through the gorgeous sand dunes and beaches on this ocean racked strip of land. i was also reading a book, "The Delta Blues", by Ted

Gioia, a faculty member at Stanford and music critic and writer. The combination of this exquisite, bleak winter landscape and the excellent description of this amazing music and culture by the author: "...one of the most salient and overlooked truths about the traditional blues: the supposed inadequacies of its most famous exponents were not limitations to be lamented, but rather inseparable from their brilliance. As such , they were no different than the avant-garde artists dazzling audiences in other genres of the time-Joyce, Picasso, Eliot and the like".

This is an idea that has a special place in my aesthetic, especially when faced with an over-whelming visual phenomena such as the sea, sky and dunes on the outer-beaches of the winter Atlantic. One's inadequacies are one's strengths in the face of such experience.

See you next week, john.

John murray classes week of Feb.14,2011

Staining and texture:

Try a painting that incorporates staining justaposed with thicker textural elements, as this Helen Frankenthaler painting, "For Hiroshige" does so effectively.

Read the review in the Friday New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/) art and design section under Art in Review, by Roberta Smith of a show of her work "East and Beyond"at Knoedler & Company.

Postmodern Assemblage:

At the same nytimes.com site take a look at the Arts section lead story on the MOMA "Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914" show that opens this Sunday and runs trough June 6. Try a cardboard assemblage object yourself. e
See you next week. john.

John murray classes week of Feb. 7, 2011

Living in the frozen world

Try and make a work of art that incorporates the bleak and beautiful conditions of this winter so far.

Not necessarily a winter landscape, but perhaps an emotional and psychological portrait of the season and its effect on you. Above at the left is a painting by Robert Ryman, check his work on line, he was very influential on my work in the early 70's and was a rich source of painterly plasticity in that times often flat work surfaces that were so emblematic of minimalism.

PostModern Assemblage:

Try a white assenblage with plaster, wood and white paint on the same theme. See you next week, barring weather cancelations. john.