John Murray classes week of July 29, 2013

New Summer term!

The new term: the same only better!

Next week try an image from the sea shore...

above is my "Crab".

See you next week, john.

John Murray classe week of July 22, 2013

Who do we think we are?

Identity is a trap for artrists.

Over my years of teaching art I have found that the most boring and tightly precious artists are the ones that are the most worried about my making marks on their work.

With that in mind I was pleased to read a review/description in Friday's Times by Roberta Smith for a show called "Work" at Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York.

Sara Greenberger Rafferty curated a show of work from a workshop she did in Mich. last year where everyone worked in factory-like process on the same paintings in a collaborative way.

The show will be up until the 27th of July.

See you next week. john.

John Murray classes week of July 15, 2013

Next week let's develop a landscape abstraction.
Above is a painting I did last week in class that is my view of Interstate 90 as it crosses Canada and heads west toward the Pacific!
One of the great aspects of art is that it lets you travel the world and mind for very little $.
See  the work of Charles Burchfield (below) to see what a boring neighborhood in upstate New York can be turned into with a set of paints and imagination.
See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of July 8, 2013

Great work that answers many questions about art!

The Shape of the World Passing Before His Eyes

Bill Traylor Finally Gets a Spotlight in New York.... Shape of the World Passing Before His Eyes Bill Traylor is the subject of two exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum. 

One day Traylor picked up a stub of pencil and a scrap of cardboard and began to draw. Over the next three or four years, alternating between memories of sharecropping and what he saw before him, he produced hundreds of drawings and paintings that rank among the greatest works of the 20th century. Traylor was a natural stylist and a born storyteller who pushed images of the life around him toward abstraction with no loss of vivacity. At once modern and archaic, his art offers proof of Jung’s collective unconscious but also of an indelible individual talent.

Traylor’s efforts exist because within days of making his first drawing, he acquired a devoted admirer: Charles Shannon (1914-96), a young white artist from Montgomery who began visiting him every week, bringing art supplies, buying some drawings and taking others for safekeeping, since it was apparent that they would otherwise not survive.

One is grateful to Charles Shannon’s keen eye and devotion when viewing the side-by-side shows of Traylor’s work at the American Folk Art Museum. “Bill Traylor: Drawings From the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts,” a traveling exhibition making its final stop, includes nearly all of the Traylors owned by the two institutions of its title. (The 29 from the Montgomery museum were a gift from Shannon.) “Traylor in Motion: Wonders From New York Collections” in an excellent in-house effort organized by Stacy C. Hollander, the American Folk Art Museum’s chief curator, and Valérie Rousseau, its new curator of self-taught art and Art Brut, who have also overseen the guest exhibition’s stop here.

The first in-depth examination of Traylor’s achievement in a New York museum, these shows present a total of 104 drawings and paintings in combinations of graphite, pencil, colored pencil, crayon, ink, watercolor  and poster paint, on salvaged cardboard and paper. They offer total immersion in his late-life burst of genius, albeit under crowded conditions that sometimes inhibit full appreciation.

Traylor’s images depict mostly black people but also some whites, capturing a world that seems eternally fraught: the animals alert, the people wary. The mood is tightly wound, sometimes antic.

One possible source for his sharp-edged, implicitly geometric figures is weather vanes, although his silhouettes are considerably enlivened with distinctive textures, expressive button eyes, a sense of fluid movement and bright color. His characters include elders who sit in chairs or walk with canes, younger folk who dance, cavort on rooftops, raise barns, drink from flasks or argue. There are assorted dogs that snarl or just nose around, and lots of birds and livestock, especially bulls, horses, mules and pigs that are seen in profile, posing for markedly affectionate portraits. Sometimes Traylor’s figures perch, climb or even merge with abstract shapes that have come to be called constructions and can suggest blacksmiths’ anvils. 

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

The self-taught artist Bill Traylor preferred to work on salvaged, sometimes irregularly shaped cardboard, as can be seen in the works on display at the American Folk Art Museum. 

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

The self-taught artist Bill Traylor preferred to work on salvaged, sometimes irregularly shaped cardboard, as can be seen in the works on display at the American Folk Art Museum. 

See you next week. john.

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.