John Murray classes December 2 and 4, 2013

Who is this man?

Find out next week when Dan Elias visits my classes at lunch break Monday and Wednesday...
Stick around after morning class or come a little early for the afternoon class and meet our new director, ask him questions and offer suggestions for his consideration for NAC.
 
In terms of an assignment try thinking visually about the WINTER SOLSTICE and its attendant phenonena in regard to the bleak landscape, the clear cold nights, and the turning of the planet away from the Sun.
See you next week. John

John Murray classes Nov. 18, 20 and 25, 2013

For the next 3 days of classes before the holiday I would like to stay with the scrap photo reference work of last week.
Above is a photo of Francis Bacon in his studio surrounded by scraps of reference that he cut from newspapers, magazines and found in trash cans.
The work the classes did from this assignment on Wed. was fresh and different:
let's stay with for a while longer.
See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 11, 2013

No Monday class due to Veteran's Day.

For Wednesday Supercharged painting:
Next week try working from a newspaper or magazine photo.
Of course the usual deconstruction/manipulation of the image into painterly terms is essential!
Above are 2 examples: Theophilus Brown's (a Bay Area figurative painter) 1956 football painting worked
from a sports photo and below that a painting that I did in the Summer of 2011 from a baseball photo.
Many great modernist and postmodernist painters work from published images.
Francis Bacon did it all the time.
See you next week. John.

John Murray classes week of November 4, 2013

Last week's destruction/collaboration work was very strong.

Next week let's try a painting usinig paint rollers.
A limited method can open a wider vision.

See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of October 28, 2013

Last week's found object challenge went well; above is what I did around a crushed piece of drain pipe and some burlap fabric.

Friday's Times had a great review by Blake Gopnik of a show at the Hirschorn Museum in DC of the Destruction Movement in art in the 60's and 70's.

I will see the show in November when I go to Washington... but the review mentioned a piece by Robert Rauschenberg, included in the show, that is his famous erased Dekooning drawing. 

This inspired next week assignment: I will setup a still life for you to paint draw or otherwise replicate and then ask you (or your neighbor) to destoy, erase or obscure in an interesting and graphic fashion.

See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of October 21, 2013

Next week find an object (above is my flattened drain spout) and work from that piece in some way: paint it attach it, draw it, deconstruct it, photocopy, photograph  it, build an altar for it.

Picasso turned a bicycle seat into a bull's head!

See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of Oct. 14, 2013

No class on Monday, the 14th, Columbus Day.
Remember that the native population dropped by 50% within a few years after European contact.

Wednesday classes please continue with work on previous assignments and your own experiments.