John Murray classes week of June 3, 2013

Summer!
Next week do an image that signifies summer to you....examples : above a painting of a swim that I did around the breakwater in Rockport...yours might be an image of a gin and tonic, a shade filled forest by a lake, the blazing sun at midday...a collage that includes melted tar?
See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of May 27, 2013

Coming from cold wet sea going

to warm inn eating hot soup of comfort away from drenched rock sand and fir too wet for fire even slippery passway down to crashing surf beach wind across plateau sky pouring rain or wild fox cries hawks wheeling gulls...crying buffeted now enclosed by comfort and smallness out there grandness sense of pain connection

death needed for life

No classes Monday.
Wednesday classes only.

See you Wednesday,
I am in Acadia National Park....constant rain and wind...gorgeous place and time.

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.