John Murray classes week of March 23, 2015

Masterpiece?

I love incidental paint stains and accidental marks and blemishes.
I took this picture with my phone camera in the slop sink room behind the studio.
What a magical mess akin to Bosch or maybe Twombley.
Images like this feed my neurotic urge toward the deconstruction of traditional painting procedures and push my visual and metaphorical concepts toward the vanishing point.
I find great pleasure in using ideas like these in my pictures.
Perhaps you could try a picture next week that uses found painting scumbles/stains and accidents in concert with your more intentional visions.
See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of March 16, 2015

AMERICA
Has fusion ruined jazz?
Is the heartland best known by its ubiquitous architectonics/
Is the soul a superstitious construct/
Where does the reptilian tarmac intrusion lead/
but from sea to dying sea...


So what do you think?
Is there an idea here?
When was the last time you were in a McDonalds?
Have you ever driven across America?
Make art!
See you next week, 
John.

John Murray classes week of March 9, 2015

Rest in Peace You Funny, Lovely Bastard.

I met Bill on a beautiful June day in 1967 and we have been friends, fellow artists, fighters and cohorts ever since.
I will miss him more than I can express.
See you next week, john.

John Murray classes first week of March 2015

I am on the brink of insanity with this weather.
I hope you're doing better than I am.
Next week try to paint a truly meaningless picture, some image with no value to yourself or anyone else.

Sometimes at my most desperate I do my best work,

as Samuel Beckett said, "I can't go on...I must go on..."

See you next week, John 

  

John Murray classes week of February 9, 2015

The snow piles up and over our plans.
Next week try a white on white painting.
Malevich, Rauschenberg, Ryman are a few who have denied traditional full-chroma art.
Underpaint and cover white, paint black and scrape to white, spray, wash, scrub...
This a hard winter, pile the paint thick, scrape it away and wash it out, pour it on, peel it back, smudge it, step on it...see you next week. I hope!
Love, john.

John Murray classes week of February 2, 2015

JOHN MURRAY - TALKING ABOUT MATISSE

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5

7pm to 9pm

Admission fee: $20 

Please RSVP to Marte at marte@newartcenter.org

Refreshments and light dessert will be served

Matisse is old hat?
So let's move on and see where his awesome radical work has led in the hands of a new generation
Some have said that he was too decorative maybe some of his later work had a bit too much decorative gestalt but not the minimal unfinished pentimento pieces of the early teens
Minimal and incident laden at the same time questioning the history, presumptions and conceits of painting that work is as strong as always but where has rigorous painting gone? I mean I guess the raw and spacially open semi finished provisional work that Manet played with in 1875
Manet went to that glorious plane of questioning and breathless vertigo
And so did Matisse the new younger painters that I see now are too busy too full of guilt and afraid of failure.

See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of January 26, 2015

What is a face?
Think about what we mean by likeness in graphic representation.
Whether in paint, paper, photography, what we think we see in a passing cloud, on a burnt piece of toast or bagel.The human visage is compelling to all members of our specie.
Think in terms of likeness, distortion, plasticity and ?.
People are strange as Jim Morrison said and our depiction of them (us) deserves to be at least fresh.
Try a piece that questions human likeness, yet demands recognition as a human image.
I once saw an image of an owl drawn with a stick in the muddy interior wall of a Mississippian culture mound. It was more "owl" than any other picture of an owl I have ever seen.
What an inspiration! With a stick in mud! 1,500 years ago! Or the hands of ancient hunters in caves, made with fat and pigment, far more alive than the academic museum portraits of dead European noblility.
See you next week, John