A devout believer and former day laborer, John Bunion Murray raised eleven children before living alone in a rudimentary cabin.
At the end of the 1970s, a mystical experience compelled him to draw and write as a means of transmitting his faith. Illiterate, he produced texts he claimed were dictated by God, intended to be read through a vial of sacred water, alongside totemic figures influenced by voodoo imagery. His work is animated by the forces of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell. His earliest paintings, made on found objects—windshields, stovetop plates, televisions—were designed to protect his home from malevolent energies. Colors carried symbolic meaning: yellow for the divine, blue for positive forces, red for negative forces. With the support of Dr. William Rawlings, he began creating larger works, distributing his drawings and nailing his writings to the walls of his house and church. Murray’s graphic universe became one of apotropaic abstractions, where symbolism evokes the crimes of the Ku Klux Klan, the human body, and disease—transforming anxiety and faith into mystical art.