John Murray classes week of October 5,2015

Last Wednesday when leaving NAC I noticed a broken mirror covered in rocks and dirt lying in a box on the back steps in the rain reflecting the weird early evening light of a stormy Autumn day.
I shot a picture of the piece and thought about how much of a painter's situation it presented.
The high-key white background the warm and cool neutrals and the drawing-like details...
so that is the problem: how would you deal with these elements in an abstract painting?
The piece below is a painting I did last Spring as a demonstration in class and it also is working with black/white/neutrals...work on a ground of sharp white glossy... play with the gray scale on your palette!
My figure class starts next Friday, it is open to drop in artists from 1-4 pm...we have a male model and will be channeling the the Bay Area Figurative movement for those who want an art historical reference point!
See you next week. John.

Cardboard Art.
Next week let's begin where Rauschenberg left off.
He used much of the cheap common material and in some cases barely manipulated it.
Use it as a painting surface; gessoed raw or both. Fold it... use it as sculpture or a surface, use paint charccoal staples ink markers stamps footprints tear it bend it.... ?

See you next week- john

John Murray classes week of September 14, 2015

Enjoy the part of the "American imagination that sneers at good manners..."- Greil Marcus

in "Mystery Train,

Images of America in Rock 'N' Roll Music".

Great book... a must read for every outlaw mind!
Fuck the tyranny of the appropriate in all aspects of life!

Welcome to my classes!

Next week let's celebrate the start of the Autumn term with an image that is a slap in the face

to all you find comforting. That is something that only you can decide and execute.

see you then John.

John Murray classes week of August 24, 2015

Another Summer comes to an end.
The beauty and endless pulse of Summer has run its course for my Supercharged class at NAC.
I love the hot late afternoons and gradually darkening early evenings in the big studio.
Next week both sessions (Monday and Wednesday) will have a model. A female nude.
Thank you for attending this Summer term.
See you next week.
John.

john Murray classes week of August 17, 2015

Night fishing at Antibes
 

Hot Summer morning relieved by aloft slightly whispers of past breezes Long evaporated in whatever there is or is not...

-John Murray

Make art!

John Murray classes week of August 10, 2015

In keeping with last week's assignment let's stay with a theme: Rauschenbergian playfulness!
Find a few pieces of scrap metal and use them in some manner to initiate a painting.
Trace them over and over attach them to your canvas or surface write about them and their history or origin across your surface and then paint as a counterpoint to the narrative.
Search the roadways of America and gather the fruits of our insane destructive energy and industry.
See you next week, john

John Murray classes week of August 3, 2015

Next week let's get personal...
Robert Rauschenberg got very personal with Amerikan Kulture in the 1960's.
His "Combine" paintings took our national obsessions, loves, hates, fears, desires and prejudices from the media and transferred them onto canvas, he then painted around and into them with a pastiche of Abstract Expressionist gestural punctuation and irony.
For you the assignment (if you choose to accept it) is to bring to class images (preferably photo copies) of what you love, hate, fear, despise, admire and find weird.
I will show you how to transfer these images to canvas and then counterpoint them with paint and ironic plasticity.
The top painting is mine and includes such personal icons as my much admired and loved Yamaha Z1 liter class motorcycle, a Picasso woodcut and a "t" square...Rauschenberg's is self explainatory.
Rauschenberg  used Xylene, a very toxic industrial cleaning fluid, to transfer his images,,,I will show you how to transfer safely with acrylic medium.
See you next week, john