John Murray classes week of August 26, 2013

End of Summer session.

Next week is the last two nights of Supercharged Painting/Summer.

It went by so fast.

I saw a lot of good work this season and had a chance to explore some ideas

of my own as well.

The sadness that comes with the turning of the Earth away from the Sun is an ancient human

feeling. Our childhood memories of Summer and the seeming endlessness of long hot days is with us 

still.

I hope you join the class this Autumn and continue to paint and think for yourself.

See you next week, John. 

John Murray classes week of August 19, 2013

Art is an improvisational exploration. 
Like dancing or boxing, art is a study that in the moment of creation is forgotten.
Read, think, then forget and act.
See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of August 12, 2013

The figure/ground dicotomy.

I have been thinking a lot about figure/ground issues and felt it would be a

good time to have the class consider and investigate the strange and illusionistic

world of this phenomena.

As the critic, Clement Greenberg said; “All painting is flat”.

Meanwhile he went on to ceaselessly promote the, at times highly

layered and spacially complex work, of Jackson Pollack. 

As soon as one makes a mark on a canvas the mind begins to see a hollow space

behind and around the gesture.

The only way around this phenomenon is to coat the canvas in a thick flat layer of paint.

This is essentially what color field painters do.

The cost of truth to the flatness of the picture plane requires one to give up most spacial play.

Modernism and its true believers aside, I feel that the illusion of space generally adds to the

power of a picture, as long as that is not its only conceit, I say let it rip!

Think about what you're doing a bit. One must have awareness to be a good artist.

Here is a picture I did last week that investigates these issues for me.

See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of August 5, 2013

Dressed in rough bags

of burlap the prince sees

the future

turning to his valet

he farts loudly and quickly

leaves the meadow

after that life

stopped being one

ceremony after all

began to find mice in the

fields to talk to and cry with

tell about his death at the hands of his

right hand 

-John Murray 2013

Mid-Summer largess finds the artist in need of inspiration!

Next week scour your mind and heart for new forms of expression.

See you next week. john. 

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.