John Murray make-up class wed. march 30, 2011

Snow cancelation make-up all day wed.

Bring any work you want critqued or paint and make-up. see you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of March 21, 2011

Richard Serra drawings at the Metropolitan Museum in April.

Serra has been a gestural Minimal sculptor for the last 45 years. He has also produced many strong gritty drawings to amplify his ouvre and a show of these is opening at the Met on April 13. If you are in New York at that time try and see it. His massive sheets of propped rusted iron are amazingly expressive icons. i've shown above a drawing in oil stick and an early molten lead throw, which i believe he executed in San Francisco in the late 60's.

This is last class this term for Monday Oil and Acrylic Painting Workshop and Postmodern Assemblage. If you have work you would like critqued please bring it to class.

Supercharged Painting: Due to snow cancelation makeup on March 30, there are still 2 classes left for Wed. artists. See you next week, john.

John murray classes week of March 14, 2011

i've been amazed by the work of Cy Twombly for years... the leap of imagination required to make these paintings and then the decades of development and movement he brought to this ouvre. MOMA has just aquired five of his paintings. His work has been under-represented in America for many years. the piece above, "Tiznit" is from 1953 and is Dutch Boy house paint pencil and crayon. Let's try a personal vision in reductive terms, perhaps monochromatic....this painting was homage to tribal objects Mr. Twombly saw at the ethnographic museum in Rome. This is akin to Picasso and Matisses's use of African masks 4 decades earlier...it also shows his obligation to Paul Klee's iconic renditions of figures and ground fom the thirties and forties...in art nothing exists in a vacuum, but the graphic surprise that occurs when visions appear out of the box of convention can belie their heritage. see you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of March 7, 2011

Expanding painting beyond the obvious.

Painting has been around for 50,000 years.

Since hunter gathers began expressing themselves with pigment and animal fat on the walls of European caves, the human race has been involved in painterly activity.

The two illustration above are interesting example of recent avant-garde painting. Cy Twombly's curtain at the Vienna Opera House (thanks Denise) and katharina Grosse's painterly installation at Mass MOCA. In my own work, i have begun a simple and direct oil painting series that belies this concept, but for years i've struggled with the idea of break-through painting and feel the need to simplify and allow myself to just paint for awhile. i think that all contemporary painters should try and move their art toward some plastic ineffable. see you next week, john.