About the Artist
I am John Murray, Afrikaans speaking and born in Vereeniging,
Gauteng, South Africa in 1962. I grew up in the North West
Province and currently live in a small Coastal Village in the
Western Cape, where I have resided for the last 10 years.
As a child I came to realization that I had a gift for drawing and during my school days I received requests from the teachers and fellow classmates to produce drawings for them.
I particularly enjoyed creative pencil sketches and even then as a child I burnt my sketches into sawn off wooden logs with a small soldering iron that I received as a birthday gift.
I regularly visited my uncle and aunt, who lived on a family farm outside Potchefstroom, where there was a multitude of wildlife. It was there that I developed a deep interest that I saw around me.
I would sit for hours outdoors observing the different animals and studying their movements and habits. At night I would sketch from memory what I had seen during the day. I still spend many hours in the bush doing wild life photography and use the photos as reference for my art work.
It was a lifelong passion of mine to be a full time artist, however back then the opportunities in South Africa that existed in the art field were not as numerous as they are today, especially in the wild life field.
Unfortunately, or should I say fortunately my life went array and 10 years ago I literally and figuratively lost everything. This was the turning point of my life and served to be an inspiration to me to start and build up my life again and exercise my artistic talents fulltime
Only after recovering from many disappointments did I view life
from a different perspective. My motto in life is "Forgive and
forget about yesterday, live fully for today and have a dream
for tomorrow".
As the wise man said: "The poor man is not the man without a cent, but the man without a dream".
I do not measure success in monetary terms as there must be a balance in one’s life. You must do what gives you inner peace and makes u happy and that which you do must be done to the very best of your abilities. I aspire to be an outstanding compassionate person who bases his life on a foundation built on integrity.
Be enthusiastic about what you do. The word enthusiasm is derived from the Greek word (Enthios) which means "Inspired by God"
I hope that my artwork gives you much joy and please feel free to e-mail or telephone me should you wish to order any of them or simply call me to have chat. Possibly we could be an inspiration to one another, you’re more than welcome.
God Bless
John Murray
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