Painter, printmaker, and caricaturist Justin Murray was born in 1912 in Minneapolis, MN. When he was still a child, his family relocated to Southern California, and Murray's drawing talent eventually secured him a scholarship to the Chouinard School of Art. During the Depression, he worked as a studio painter and muralist for the WPA, and in the late 1930s he moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Coast magazine, frequently signing his work as "Just" or the monogram "JM." In addition to a successful career in caricature, he was a noted painter whose work took on a Surrealist style that echoed his cartoons. In 1973 he moved once more, settling in the town of Mendocino, where he remained until his death in 1987.

Murray was a member of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Artists Associations. He exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Art (1936), Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco (1944), San Francisco Museum of Art (1957), and various Mendocino galleries in the 1970s and 1980s. His work is included in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Library of Congress, the Oakland Museum, the New York Graphic Society, and the U.S. General Services Administration.