John Murray classes week of January 5, 2015

Happy New Year 2015 and welcome to my classes.
I would like to start the term with a suggested assignment.
Think of a personal adventure that you have had, preferably as a child and try an image based on the emotional load of that experience.
Don't be concerned with an accuracy, drawing or figuration.
Be free and loose.
Below are a few of mine and the childhood experience related to them.

I was 10 years old when myself and another boy decided to swim across Quincy Bay from Wollaston Beach to Squantum MA.
We set out late in the afternoon and swam until the last of the moored boats and the open water began.
At that point the other kid,whose name I can not remember,decided to swim back to shore.
I wanted to push on, and did.
The water got deeper and choppier more oceanic as I swam.
The Long Island bridge loomed ahead in the distance. 
The rocky shore of Squantum was very far in my view from low in the water.
The fishy smell of the east wind tide filled my senses. 
Sharks,whales,blackfish all sprang  to mind from the depths beneath my blue cold feet.
At last I reached the barnacle encrusted boulders of the Squantum shore. 
I had landed on the back yard of an ocean front house barefoot and clothed only in a small boys bathing suit. 
I scrambled out of the water and looked back toward across the bay from where I had come. 
The original shoreline appeared as a scumble of buildings and masts a long way off in the late afternoon light.
It must have been 5:30 on a late summer afternoon and I had no stomach for swimming back shivering and tired.
It was close to supper time and I had to get home fast,not in another 1 1/2 hours, the time it had taken me to swim across the bay.
I ran up through the yards and found a street. 
I stuck my thumb out and was soon picked up by a middle-aged man in a sedan. 
He drove me the 3 or so miles around the peninsular to Wollaston beach.
I thanked him and ran through the glass strewn alley that went between the Bowling alley and Elsie's Tavern and led from the beach to my backyard.
I was not too late for supper.

See you next week, John. 

John Murray classes week of January 5, 2015

Thank you, my artists friends, for supporting my classes this Autumn term.
I hope you all have a fun and adventurous holiday season.
See you next year!
John and Sandy

John Murray classes week of December 8, 2014

Next week is the last week of the Fall term.
I enjoyed working with all the artists who attended my classes and saw some exceptional work created in the NAC studio.
Think of a work that treats the existential fears that at core created all human holidays.
The Winter Solstice, for instance that gave us many ancient and Christian beliefs about mortality and rebirth.
Hanukkah, the festival of light, where the menorah burned for 8 days with only enough oil for one day.
Fight the darkness, in spite of the fact that we all eventually go into it again.
As artists we have a connection to the primal that other non-artists haven't developed.
Tuesday's Plasticity and the Postmodern Figure class will have a female model, Thea, someone with whom I have not worked before.
Thank you for supporting my classes and being resilient and powerful artists.
See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of December 1, 2014

What constitutes a painting?
Above is the light switch in the back room of the large studio at NAC, before it was painted this term.

Next is my dog scratching in front of a spray graffitti  piece in Medway MA.

Then a painting of a nude I did at my Montserrat College of Art Workshop a year ago.

What is your vision of "Painting"?

Next week there will be a model in both Supercharged class on Wednesday the 3rd.

See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of November 24, 2014

Monday pm class, Postmodern Assemblage and Painting, will have a model next week.
Tuesday, Plasticity and the Postmodern Figure class will have 2 models, a male and a female, to work with.
There will be no classes on Wednesday the 26th, the day before Thanksgiving.
On that day commemorate the great Native People the European invaders destroyed.
See you next week John.

John Murray classes week of November 17, 2014

Monday morning's Oil and Acrylic Workshop class will have a model next week.

Think about a narrative for the figure and what concept you can bring to the execution of your piece.

I am not interested in academic figure representation and try to use the human form as a starting point

for a visual discussion.

The work I've shown above does this in some way.

Although human experience is varied by individuals and cultures, we all carry a story.

Bring some of yours to your painting of the model.The model for this Monday is female.

All classes will have a model before the end of the term.

See you next week, John.

John Murray classes week of November 10, 2014

No figure class on Tuesday the 10th due to Veterans Day holiday.
All other classes on Monday and Wednesday will be in session.
Above is Marsden Hartley's homage to a WW1 German officer.
For those artists, how about a painting that starts with the concept of militarism and becomes
a decorative pattern piece, as Hartley's painting, based on his love for a military officer,
did 100 years ago.
Nothing has changed, the same old jingoism that drives patriotism and our experience of the resultant
horrors seem to have no effect on our specie's war-like instincts.
So why not turn to these into art.
See you next week, John.