Home | Artists	Updated December 14, 2006
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

View Images USA South

Mitchell, GA John B. "J. B." Murry (or Murray) 1907-1988 Paintings, spiritual and protective messages

Information: John B. "J. B." Murray lived nearly all his life in a rural, remote Georgia community where he and his wife raised eleven children. In the late 1970s, after his marriage dissolved, the devoutly religious Murray became convinced he was receiving messages from God and, though he was illiterate, began writing with any available instruments in an undeciphered script on reams of paper. He was incarcerated and then briefly institutionalized for his behavior; upon his release he continued inscribing his communications throughout his home's interior and on paper, even sealing prophetic inscriptions in envelopes and giving them to members of his church. Murray's connections to traditional African American belief systems are as valid as his possible psychosis and therefore complicate psychiatric or diagnostic approaches to the artist and his ritualized paintings. Though his script resembles automatic writing, Murray believed he could read it. His "46 abstractions" are in fact esoteric narratives which, using repetitious, calligraphic lines and marks, personal theories about the powers of various colors, and a notation of dotted eyes to identify human or spectral precence's, reconfigure his life's events in terms of a struggle between good and evil. Considered one of "50 Classic Outsiders", Raw Vision Sourcebook, 2002" The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science

	Reference / Links:
	abcd-art brut (under Collection > Artists): "John (J.B.) Murry" Phyllis Kind Gallery: "J.B. Murry (John B. Murry or Murray)" The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science SlotinFolk Art Georgia’s Own Treasure: Folk Artists Gordon Gallery
	(Detour Art is not responsible for the content of external web sites.)

Bibliography: Museums ABCD Collection, Paris Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, LA Eternod/Mermod Collection, Lausanne High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Reference "In the Hand of the Holy Spirit: The Visionary Art of J.B. Murray" (Hardcover) by Mary G. Padgelek "Baking in the Sun, Visionary Images from the South" by Andy Nasisse and Maude Wahlman, University of Washington Press, exhibit catalog, 1987. "Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists" by Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, New York, 1990. "20th Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art" by Betty-Carol Sellen, Cynthia J. Johnson, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 1993. "Flying Free: Twentieth-Century Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ellin and Baron Gordon" by Ellin Gordon, Barbara L. Luck and Tom Patterson, exhibit catalog for The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, 1997. "Testimony: Vernacular Art of the African-American South: the Ronald and June Shelp Collection", Cronwill, Danto, Gaither, Gundaker and McWillie, 2001. "Souls Grown Deep: African American vernacular Art of the South", Vol 2, Arnett, et al, 2001. "Let it Shine: Self-Taught Art from the T. Marshall Hahn Collection" by Lynne E. Spriggs, Joanne Cubbs, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Susan Mitchell Crawley, Michael E. Shapiro and Peter Harholdt, organized by the High Museum of Art, 2001. "Pictured in My Mind", exhibit catalog, 1998 "50 Classic Outsiders", Raw Vision Sourcebook, 2002" "American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003. Slotin Folk Art Auction Catalog, Masterpiece Sale, November 4, 2006

	Credit:
**If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at
(back to listing)	(top)
Home | Artists A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z