John Bunion Murray

 

 John Bunion Murray (1908–1988) was a self-taught artist in Glascock County, Georgia. He is considered to be a major figure in the world of Southern Vernacular Art and Outsider Art. His work is now in many important collections, including that of the American Folk Art Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and has been featured in many museum exhibitions, including "Self-Taught Genius" at AFAM and "When the Stars Begin to Fall" at the Studio Museum.Murray worked as a sharecropper for the majority of his life. He was married, and he and his wife had eleven children. By the time he was in his fifties, his wife had left him and his children had also left home, leaving him especially isolated.At the age of 70, Murray experienced a religious vision while working the fields which inspired him to produce a remarkable body of abstract paintings and drawings in the last decade of his life.  Seeing an eagle descend from the sun, Murray believed that he had been granted a privileged religious insight, which was to be the inspiration for his work as an artist.