John Murray classes week of Oct. 1, 2012

Anyone interested in a trip in January?

I've done this before (5 times) but not for a few years (below is a picture of Carol McMann, an artist who worked with me in Borrego for several workshops). It is an amazing place with perfect temperatures in January. Claudia is thinking of packaging the trip to save money and streamline it.Let her know if you are interested. My $ numbers and dates are only a guesstimate, so talk to her.

Next week let's try a self portrait in emotional and deconstructed fashion. What would that mean to your sense of identity? How deep is our "identity" and can we change it? How does this effect our painting language? Think about who you think you are and how this can be translated through the plasticity of paint and collage. see you next week, john.

Borrego Springs Desert Art Retreat and Workshop

Jan. 7?-11?, 2013 with painter/teacher John Murray.

Take a break from the quotidian and spend 5 days in the beautiful

California desert painting and art-making with an experimental artist and teacher and you’re talented and courageous peers. Fly to San Diego? And drive into the majestic low desert park of Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Home to Big Horn Sheep, Road Runners and Cougars Borrego is an amazing low-altitude desert surrounded by

mountains and vast vistas. John Murray has taught at NAC for 9 years

And works with artists in a unique and intense method that will help you find your visual language and further develop your art making.

A package price of $2500? Include round-trip flight, hotel room and workshop fees

Contact Claudia at NAC for more information     

John Murray classes week of Sept. 24, 2012

SUGARLEOPARDABSINTHSILVERPicasso's Dream



SILVER

The polished spoon-;

reflections slide

and spark.



ABSINTHE

In front of the canvas,

a flattened woman twists

and shatters.



LEOPARD

Deep in Montmartre,

an African merchant licks

his ivory teeth.



SUGAR

Wetting his brush, the artist parts

the sweet thighs of commerce-;

objects ring like good glass.



What do you make of this?

What can you make from this?

See you Monday. John

John Murray classes week of September 17, 2012

OUT OF THE RUINS 

 Reimagining the Romantic Tradition

Curated by Elizabeth Thact

Christopher Carroll

Clare Grill

Jane Fox Hipple

Fred H.C.Liang

Ryan McLennan

Gina Ruggeri

Marisa Tesauro

Elizabeth Thach

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.  ~Oscar Wilde

On walking into the gallery the first thing that struck me was the amount of empty space in the room.

Not dramatic space…negative space that seemed to have been forgotten by the curator.

The larger work seemed over-blown and technique heavy.

But amidst the ruins I found a few interesting and evocative pieces;

Christopher Carroll’s split screen video, passenger/pilot, was a powerful and humorous piece that portrayed him wading and investigating with a torch the dark negative space under a stone arch bridge in the Fenway.

Jane Fox Hipple’s, “Painted Bricks”, is a fresh and surprising treatise on expanding painting into sculpture, sort of a subtle and painterly Carl Andre.

The three small paintings by Clare Grill were not so much a comment on the English Romantic Tradition, but to me a welcoming (to a painter) exercise in Provisional Painting, a category of interest to me in my own work.

Sorry to say it, but that’s about all I found to think about in this academic exercise in “Art”.

I was reminded of my own experience in listening to Black Blues music as a young teenager. The African American musical tradition that arose in the Mississippi Delta in the 1920’s, and that I found profoundly moving and artistically exciting as a white kid, has been deserted by Black artists today.

I think it may have been Cornell West who said that Black people look forward, not back.

I would recommend that white elite artists do the same.  

After viewing this show, go upstairs and see Jasmine Chen’s fine small show of paintings, sort of a palette cleansing sherbet after a heavy meal.

If you want an assignment next week, view the two shows and paint a response!

See you next week, john.