Makai Murray was finishing a piece in his Stoughton studio. The wall-sized work, an abstraction of three-dimensional shapes and color clipped to two pieces of plywood, would serve as a backdrop for an audiovisual installation in his planned show on Newbury Street that summer, his biggest show yet. He calmly stood above his creation with a placid expression as he mixed paint with the amplified words of Frank Ocean spilling from a nearby speaker. But three months later, the Newbury show had yet to materialize. Even then, Murray’s tranquility remained undisturbed; he hadn’t failed — it just wasn’t the right time for this dream. He turned toward his next creation with the same peaceful devotion.
A senior philosophy major, Murray has been a professional artist since he turned 18. He’s exhibited his work across Massachusetts and Rhode Island, scoring thousands of dollars in sales to private collectors. Yet he’s self-taught, rejected by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and intrinsically driven to work daily on pieces and self-manage the business of his practice — all while finishing his degree at Tufts.
I first met Murray in October 2023 while covering the premiere of “The Highest Standard” at the GlobeDocs Film Festival. The documentary centers on three students enrolling in a gap year at Beacon Academy between middle and high school, a program that prepares lower-income minority students to apply to the most competitive private schools in the country. Not until the epilogue is it revealed that one of the three stars, a fun-loving conscientious kid named Makai, had committed to Tufts.
While “The Highest Standard” never mentions Murray’s art, the film centers on the split identities of students who come from marginalized backgrounds at elite institutions. Over the course of multiple chats with Murray and his colleagues, it’s made clear that tension continues to inform Murray’s art.
“I live in two worlds and I live in both worlds very well,” Murray said. “That’s something that can’t be well explained to people who live in one world, and most of the people in this country live in one world and they have no exposure to the other. I feel like my art serves as a vehicle for people to get some level of mobility between the worlds.”
Navigating “two worlds” has been core to Murray’s identity since his enrollment at Beacon at 14. In addition to rigorous academics, Beacon prepared Murray for the future worlds of whiteness and privilege he would be entering at St. George’s School for high school and Tufts for college. Reflecting on this time, Murray asked, “How much different would my life have been had I not gone skiing or taken that [etiquette] class that teaches me about the seven different forks that are supposed to be on the table?”
An obsessive dedication continues to inform his creation of art. Repeatedly, across interviews separated by months, Murray emphasized his daily habit of working from “10 to 2, 10 to 2, 10 to 3, 10 to 5” ahead of a show, meaning 10 p.m. to the early morning, the hours most available to a student with a full course load. Yet no matter how hard he works, there’s still something unspeakably foreign about these elite institutions. He may have worked tirelessly on a regimented schedule to become senior prefect at St. George’s, but he’s still socially an “other.” On the weekends when his classmates vacationed in the Bahamas, he stayed on campus. On holidays when they sojourned abroad, he returned to his home in Brockton, Mass.
Isara Krieger, director of “The Highest Standard,” spoke about the split identities and challenges Murray faces in these predominantly white and upper-class spaces.
“Makai said something to me [about going] to an event and starting to be more aware of how uncomfortable he felt,” Krieger said. “He was one of three Black people in a room full of white people. He had the same accolades as everyone there and every reason to be a part of the event, but he felt so uncomfortable. He had worked so much harder to get into that room than everyone else there. … I wished he had said that in the film. That is exactly what I wanted to show.”
One of the primary institutions Murray has struggled against happens to be the SMFA. Even after earning a large commission for a piece sold to a Newport mansion resident, his transfer application was rejected, likely because he refused to play the admissions game.
“I had to submit a portfolio but I don’t take pictures of my art,” Murray said. “So I threw together a little video that basically says … I’ve hit certain amounts of success in my art and I just don’t have a portfolio because I don’t take pictures of my art.”
When it comes to his art, Murray refuses to compromise, even if it means gaining status. Just as he wouldn’t photograph his art for the SMFA, Murray withholds from gloating about his commissions. Throughout our conversations, Murray showed a consistent discomfort towards my proddings of the specifics of the business side of his art. He remained vague when describing who purchased his pieces and where they were housed. Exorbitant prices were only mentioned when trying to make a point about changing the affordability of the art world.
When speaking about “The Unframed 500,” an ambitious project from 2023 that aimed to produce 500 pieces arranged in a grid and sold individually, Murray paired high-priced pieces with affordable ones. “Those panels I had for sale at a gallery in Rhode Island for over $10,000, but they’re in the same series as $10 pieces,” Murray said. “It’s important for me to have series of works that encapsulate all the demographics of people and enable it to be beneficial [to] all those people purchasing those pieces.” He emphasized that the high-ticket pieces upped the valuation of the lower-price ones. Selling the $10,000 piece adds value to his name, boosting the $10 piece and benefitting the purchaser.
Murray stands with an in-progress art piece.
Inherent in this perspective on selling art, which Murray defines as being “by [his] own rules,” is also his generosity. When I was observing Murray in his studio in the spring of 2023, he showed me all his currently unsold pieces held in storage. After I expressed interest in one, he told me to take it for free. I refused, not feeling comfortable not paying for the work, which greatly upset him. Months later, when I was sitting in his car for another interview, I asked about a covered artwork in his backseat. He told me he had just sold the work and needed to transport it to a gallery, and when he removed the cover, the piece was the same one he nonchalantly tried to give me in the spring. He refused to comment on how much the piece sold for.
Even with his own financial success, Murray remains skeptical of art world economics. Throughout our conversation, he mulls over questions of mixing creativity with work.
“I think the idea of galleries for profit is flawed. I think the idea of success being directly correlated to finances in the art space is flawed. And I think that I can chase success in the art space, by way of money, because that’s how it is while also trying to combat that,” Murray reflected. “I’m not just making pieces so that I can make money. I want to make sure that my relationship with art in the way I have it now stays consistent.”
He further explained his relationship with art. “I try to use my work as a reflection of where I am currently,” Murray said. “Not even so much in an emotional capacity, but in a philosophical capacity.”
This approach doesn’t prevent Murray from dreaming big; it merely divorces the anxiety of expectation from his creative process. Now he can reframe what would seem like failures — rejection from the SMFA, the canceling of his Newbury Street show — as new paths on his creative journey as an artist.
Approaching the end of his time at Tufts, Murray continues to grow. He recently listed his works on Artsy, an exclusive online marketplace for artists with collector demand. Prices, of course, are only available upon request. Two have already sold.
