John Murray classes

John Murray Immersion Workshop June 24-28

At Montserrat College of Art

“Art is an investigation into its own possibilities”

Thank you for taking the workshop here is a basic supply list:

Paints (oil or acrylic or both)

Canvas (6-10 different sizes from small to as large as you can transport), panel, metal or paper as a surface

Charcoal, fixative

Mediums for oil or acrylic (if acrylic I recommend Utrecht’s

Acrylic gel as well as Gac 500 and tar gel)

Any other material you might be interested in for still life reference, collage, embellishment… etc

Here is an approximate plan (very approximate!) for the week:

Monday June 24, 9am:

Introductions of artists and discussion of goals for each artist and my concepts of painting/art/teaching.

Develop working sketches in charcoal for first pieces

Critique sketches and discuss execution in terms of medium, scale and alternate approaches

Begin work

Tuesday, June 25, 9am:

Paint, discuss, critique most of the day

Wednesday, June 26, 9am:

We will have a model for most of the day as well as a continuation of work under way, I would like to draw and deconstruct from the figure, face and form to use for incorporation in on going pieces and for new work

Thursday, June 27, 9am:

Paint, assemble, discuss and critique

Friday, June 28, 9am:

Paint assemble, discuss and critque.

Review work produced during week.

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Montserrat College of Art <shelton.walker@montserrat.edu>
Date: May 28, 2013, 5:30:12 PM EDT
To: jmurray924@comcast.net
Subject: There's still time to register for painting with John Murray!
Reply-To: shelton.walker@montserrat.edu

summer immersive art workshops featured artist john murray    Murray has lived in Los Angeles, Provincetown and Boston. For more than 40 years he has explored his bleak/sensual aesthetic through paints and mediums of all descriptions, as well as printmaking and assemblages. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, and exhibits widely throughout the North East. jmurrayart.com   Save 10% There's still time to register! Plus, if you refer a friend for John Murray's workshop, we'll give you a %10 discount off your own tuition! Contact us for more details, and reference this email.  Hurry!  Registration for John's course will close soon! week-long art workshops june 10 - july 12 From painting and fiber arts to comics and creative writing, our diverse summer immersives are designed to allow participants time and instruction to explore new avenues of creative inquiry. We invite you to spend your summer devoted to your art in the unique environment that only a working art college can offer. For details on all our course offerings, visit our website here.   apply now!   Visit our website or contact us at ce@montserrat.edu or 978 921 4242 x 1202 to learn more.

Forward email This email was sent to jmurray924@comcast.net by shelton.walker@montserrat.edu |   Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. Montserrat College of Art | 23 Essex Street | Beverly | MA | 01915

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.

John Murray classes week of April

Next week please try a piece (painting /drawing/assemblage/construction/installation or phone videos) that make a statement about April/May...

see you next week, john.  

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965)
The Waste Land (1922)

Workers and farmers unite
You have nothing,to lose
But your chains
The world is to win
This is May Day! May!
Your armies are veining the earth!

Railways and highways have tied
Blood of farmland and town
And the chains
Speed wheat to machine
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies veining the earth!

Hirers once fed by the harried
Cannot feed them their hire
Nor can chains
Hold the hungry in
This is May Day! May!
The poor are veining the earth!

Light lights in air blossoms red
Like nothing on earth
Now the chains
Drag graves to lie in
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies are veining the earth!

March comrades in revolution
From hirer unchained
Till your gain
Be the freedom of all
The World's May Day! May!
May of the Freed of All the Earth!