John Murray classes week of March 11, 2013

Art predicates and structures the world, such as we are in a position to apprehend, comprehend, or know it. Stein and Joyce are as intensely aware of this as are Paul de Man or Jacques Derrida. This apprehension is crucial. It is the stuff good art is made of, yet it places the practice of painting in a slightly uncomfortable position. For if art is"made" of this apprehension, if objects in which the language-nature of Being and reality have already been installed, pre-programmed in an implicit or immanent way, how then are paintings to register this distinctive twentieth-century tension without in some sense relinquishing their nature, without becoming something other than art, as traditionally understood. This is a predicament in which any work, any poetry responding to this sort of apprehension, would place itself. If the constitution and motive of painting shuttle from immanence and silence to explicitness, can it still be art? Or will a mode of poetic discourse have emerged that is somehow art and not art at the same time, sharing the same bizarre fusion of organic and inorganic, dead and living elements of Kafka or Matisse. Such an uncomfortable but at the same time funny and mold-shattering work might well be something new under the sun.

See you next week, john.

john murray classes week of March, 4, 2013

Next week lets add a minimal element to a self portrait above is a Georg Baselitz sculpture that is a
grid hacked from a piece of wood.
Abstract art requires constant manipulation of the material and the viewer. Yes the viewer must be pushed and abused aesthetically in order for the artist to register both retinally and emotionally.
Try another self portrait in a different manner/material/mindset...

See you next week, john.

John Murray Montserrat Intensive Workshop

 

Immersion Studio Week with John Murray

At Montserrat School of Art.

Week of June 24-28, 2013

Stay at the college and work every day from 9-4

with artist, John Murray.

For details click on link below.

The link is http://montserrat.edu/continuing-ed/summer-workshops/index.php

John Murray week of Feb. 18, 2013

I hope you have a good vacation week.
I've uploaded a video that Mary Judge made from a poem of mine, "Picasso's Dream"
I hope it works. I hope you enjoy it.
See you the week of Feb. 25. john.

John Murray classes week of Feb.11, 2013

Next week let's celebrate Blues poetry and music in honor of Black History month.

Well, I've got stones in my passway 
And my road, it's black as night 
Yeah, I got stones in my passway 
And my road, it's black as night 
I got some pains in my heart 
And they're stealing my appetite 

Well, I got a bird to whistle 
I got a bird to sing 
Yes, I got a bird to whistle 
I got a bird to sing 
I got a woman that I'm lovin' 
But she don't mean a thing 

You trying to take my life 
All my money too 
I say to you lady 
What you trying to do? 
I say please, hey let us be friends 
You hear me howlin' in your passway, baby please let me in 

Well, I got three legs to walk on 
Baby, please don't block my road 
Yes, I got three legs to walk on 
Baby, please don't block my road 
-Stones In My Passway-R. Johnson 

Robert Johnson was a brilliant and tragic young bluesman from the Missiippi Delta cotton fields and juke joints of the sharecropper 1930's. 
He wrote and performed in the Black underclass culture of the racist American South and died from poisoning by a jealous husband and owner of a bar where he was performing in 1938.
Many myths have grown around the writing and guitar playing of Johnson and he has influenced generations of  musicians and poets with his compressed and exquisite work.
I'll play sound Johnson and other blues as well next week and see if it inspires some art for you.
See you next week, john. 

John Murray classes week of Feb 4, 2013

As Roberta Smith said about Outsider Art; "...with irrefutable proof that the most lasting work comes from unstoppable emotional necessity, an especially useful lesson for the moment."

How do you feel about your own work?
Next week let's try a piece that touches on a deep emotional issue for you.
It can be a painful way to work and in some ways negates my "painting is about paint" theses.

Of course it has to be about the plasticity and sense of the artist's hand (or the denial of that sense if you feel ironic about your emotional content and want a cooler feel).

See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of Jan. 28, 2013

What do you make of these images?
I try to avoid politics, but live in a world dominated by tribal nationalism, human interests and competition.
What images do you find emerging in your work, or what do you think of the concept of taking imagery and using it in your art?
The bottom painting that I did last week (over an old painting that artist, Karen Rothman gave me to paint over) seemed to elicit for me some of the visual intensity of the top 2 photos.
With my own work what comes first, next or last in my language is up for grabs.
Where I find my sources shifts and constantly doubles back on itself.
Reading observing and digesting aspects of culture and life feeds on itself and I am wrapped in a world of  visual complexity.
Trying to teach art (painting) is hopeless unless the artist/student emerges herself in the visual world.
See you next week, john.