The Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Geoffrey Raymond at: (917) 693 9936 or gvraymond@gmail.com

Painter To Exhibit Portrait of Rupert Murdoch in Front of Wall Street Journal

-- Asks passers-bye to “annotate” painting with magic markers --

New York, NY (July 24, 2007) -- Wall Street artist Geoffrey Raymond will be exhibiting a large portrait of Rupert Murdoch in front of the headquarters of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal this week and asking people to share comments about Mr. Murdoch and his pending acquisition of The Journal by writing them on the surface of the canvas.

“I have my own opinions about the Murdoch acquisition,” explains Raymond. “But I thought it would be more interesting to paint a picture of the man and let other people share theirs. So I’ll be standing outside 200 Liberty Street with my painting and a bunch of magic markers, inviting people—particularly Dow Jones employees—to take a moment out of their lunch-hour and tell me what they think.”

Raymond has a history of depicting Wall Street’s movers and shakers on canvas. Last year he exhibited portraits of former NYSE head Richard Grasso, Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein and television stock picker Jim Cramer.

“It’s likely the Murdoch deal will either happen or not before the end of this week, and peoples’ lives will change as a result. I want to give them an opportunity to voice opinions that might otherwise go unheard.”

“The Annotated Murdoch,” as the painting is titled, measures four feet by five. The medium is acrylic on canvas. Raymond describes his style, which involves throwing paint onto a flat canvas, as “what Jackson Pollock might have come up with if he painted like Chuck Close.”

Raymond chronicles the development of the Murdoch painting, as well as many others, on his blog: www.yearofmagicalpainting.blogspot.com .

Concurrent with the exhibition, the painting will be auctioned on eBay as “Portrait of Rupert Murdoch.”

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Editor’s note: Blog features downloadable jpeg of painting.