To and From the World: a dialog with space(s)

Century College Niche Gallery, April 11-June 16, 2022

Painting for me has mostly been a solitary practice. Although I see myself primarily as a studio painter, I have been a mural painter and even ‘performed’ painting during music and art events. After those brief outward facing moments, I always returned to the protected space of my studio. I have used my painting practice to explore nearly anything that interests me with some reoccurring themes. The themes of recreating the feeling of space, the sweep of time in an image, the sensation of looking into and out from spaces, and the awareness of place all thread their way through my work.

In 2022 and 2023, I felt the need to move beyond my studio – out into the landscape to make work. I have done work in the past about maps, place, and geography, but I really felt like moving my studio out into the landscape. At first, I tried some small quick trips that in retrospect, helped me to really feel effective and comfortable painting in public. Soon, I crafted some tools to help move my studio out into the landscape. I developed a bicycle-mounted easel, a large portable studio, a pocket sketch kit, and watercolor setup. These tools accompanied me as I extended my trips.

My work changed too as I moved further and further away from my studio. At first, feeling the weight of tradition, I painted representationally – trying to capture the likeness of the landscape. I learned some plein aire techniques and participated in some painting festivals. After each trip when I returned to the studio, I had some new skills, a renewed sense of wonder, and some experimenting to do.

I began to feel that a single image didn’t really communicate all that I was experiencing in those spaces. I sought to explore other aspects of the landscape – the smells, how I felt, what I was thinking about, etc. when I was looking. The idea of “landscape” permeated my thinking. I started to realize that how I gazed into and through the landscape very much reminded me of a cinematic type of scan – a broad visual casting outward. That sweep of space in cinema, as in my experience, also guides the viewer inward to a parallel emotional landscape. When we look, we feel.

The experience of a landscape or place is plural. It is both physical and non-physical. Environment – where we are or where we perceive we are, has a profound effect on us. Taking time while painting as I did – sitting, looking, observing these places, can be a powerful exercise to help one to identify where they really are. The painter inevitably creates a painting in reaction to something. “Where” for me became the something.

In the end, the deliberate shove or push that I gave myself created some exciting creative avenues of exploration, and a deeper awareness of how I experience places and environments. I ventured out and experienced new spaces, then returned refreshed with new ideas. An inspirational breath to and from the world.

Johnston 2.21.23

Been painting air (Plein Air that is...)

 So, worked up some courage and really embraced the idea of painting outside. My local art center (The White Bear Center for the Arts) had a great Plein Aire Competition and I registered. For several days, I painted at a local park and really enjoyed the process. I put together a set-up with my bike:

Once I spent a day, then I made some adjustments! I am not totally new to Plein Air, however this year, I quickly learned to pack lightly when biking. The first trip out, I used small tubes of paint in oil and acrylic. During the following trips, I found myself taking fewer and fewer things. I ended up using oils exclusively, on wood panels. Here are some pics of the adventure! 

Can You Hear It? @ 45.0727222, -93.1002028

12 x 12 Oil on Birch Panel

Reaching @ 45.0727222, -93.1002028

12 x 12 Oil and Acrylic on Birch Panel

The whole experience was exciting, and it inspired me to make some paintings at Big Sandy Lake in McGregor, MN. I painted for a couple days on small (4 5/8 x 8 1/4 inch panels) in oil. Here are the results:

Southeast @ 46.7597861,-93.2802194

Northeast @  @ 46.7597861,-93.2802194

These small paintings are oil on board and are the smallest I have made (4 5/8 x 8 1/4"). I am discovering that landscape painting and (painting in the landscape) is providing me a great escape from the basement studio and the work that I do there. The next trip for me is to the great Lake Superior (Port Wing, WI) to paint the first week of August in the Port Wing Plein Air Festival here's the link. I am preparing, and tinkering with more easel set-ups for that yearly event! More updates in the future! I guess my advice to you is for goodness sake, get out of your studio and make art! 

New Introductions

 Okay, I did it! I made an introductory video - such an awkward thing to do, but I've heard it is nice to have. After nearly 6 tries, I captured one that I liked. So, there we go! I am finding that doing a video diary of sorts from the studio is kind of therapeutic. I am often over whelmed buy the amount of material that I am moving through in the studio in any given week, month, or season. I am starting to enjoy this as part of a routine to help me to organize and keep track of these investigations or aesthetic experiments. I have often thought that it would be great to open up the studio, to make stuff and show the process. The successes, surprises, as well as the challenges and failures. I am working alone, and am hoping that this connects with someone! So, onward! I am discovering that after the initial set up, tech failures, learning curve, and creating a digital studio amongst the clutter and creative refuse of the studio, that I think this should be able to be incorporated into my daily process, and as I continue, it is becoming more normal. The introduction in for me I suppose - this new creative space, tech included, is welcoming me to create and share. So I am, so am I. Poetics aside, this is pretty fun! Here is my first introduction video: 

Paintstew is hopping!

This week, I decided to create videos for all the works that I have in-process. It is a nice process, as I have been trying out some new hardware - the Stream Deck. After a quick set up, and some trials, I was able to create some new content for my YouTube channel.

To date, 8-9 series of works since last fall - all in various states of resolution and discovery. The process of introducing them to an audience was helpful and enlightening. I think in the end, the process of tracking these sets in this way will help me to focus and hone my process. So far, folks have been pretty receptive. I am hoping to up my production game as I make more of these. Already, I created custom thumbnails for each with my watermark! 21st Century studio here I come! Here is a recent addition:

Sketchbook inspiration from an inattentive dad

 The studio is popping this week as I found some old sketches from about 3 years ago - pre-pandemic. I found myself taking my awesome teenage children to Taekwondo 3s a week. Well, I was consistently the parent with his head in his sketchbook. The 9 x 12 sketches were compositions of ink-drawn shapes, symbols, letterforms, and abstract bubble-like forms. I think I remember at the time that I was attempting to make these drawings as I make paintings - the layering of elements. I made many of these using Rocket book: find it here as it was very convenient, and I was experimenting with cataloging sketches in my google drive. I ended up with 20-30 rectangular, vertical compositions. That was several years ago...

As it happens often in the studio, I stumble across something from the past that triggers a blast of inspiration. This is what happened, and I began transferring these small drawings on to 18 x 24, 140lb cold press watercolor paper. I always wondered what they would look like large. I had tried in the past to simply print them out large (13 x 19) but something was missing. I had the realization that maybe I should hand-reproduce them using the original images, transparencies, an overhead projector, and my favorite Molotow Blackliner pen. So, here's the first video explaining it all:

Wandering Back and Forth Through Portals

 Today, I began a approach to a series that I have begun to call "Portals". The idea has been tumbling around in my mind since my MFA Thesis work in 1999-2000 so a VERY long time. I think it is just an observation of a theme that I notice reoccurring in my work. The many works these past 20 years have all sort of orbited around a common conceptual thread. This is that I think of my paintings as passages to a viewer, through the time in my studio, to any moment when the audience notices the work. The works might be conduits of ideas, feelings, or ? that in a way transcends time/space - like small messages to future viewers, in other places. As fantasy as this sounds, I am fascinated by how my paintings function - maybe like aesthetic machines or something?

In 2020 and 2021, I began some works on paper. Those works were an exploration in present-ness and were my attempt to give-in to the process of painting that was impulsive, reactionary, and improvisational. What happened was my acceptance of the wisdom that says when you paint, you act, you react, you manifest, you work. Later, you think. I allowed my work to evolve, devolve (and sometimes destruct), as I worked daily on each piece. The series in that time were always built from multiples, 3, 4, 5, 7 works in any single exploration. In the end each piece resolved into it's own presence, that then informed me to it's larger meaning and purpose - still the concept 'portals' resonated. 

The winter of 2021 brought for me a time of reflection as do the Minnesota winter months in my studio practice. I resolved many of the works on paper and the idea/word/concept of 'portal' kept returning. So, I decided to continued the exploration using poured resin (that I was familiar with from my work in 1999-2006) to further isolate significant moments/layers in my painting process. The works in the winter/spring of 2021/2022 were all squares, 16 x 16, 12 x 12, etc. I did a series of 3 - 16 x 16, another group of 3 - 16 x 16, and a series of 4 - 12 x 12. Each of these is an exploration in space, time, and moments - yet also 'portals'.

Fast-forward to Spring 2022. I decide to embrace the idea of portals, and begin an exploration using 20" diameter x 5/8" birch plywood rounds. I am beginning the process using 10 panels, and have decided to video each step in the process. We'll see what happens! First step: getting the panels ready to paint!

Peering outward, seeing inward

This week, I am in northern WI spending some time in a cabin painting. While here for a week, I am taking much-needed time to look, to reflect, and to see. This morning as I was out for my walk, I became aware that my work over the years has always been about this moment that I was experiencing. Walking down a gravel road, looking down, hearing the birds, looking right and left - watching the forest sIowly pass me by -  one stride at a time. I was looking out - peering through the underbrush into the forest. I remember as a child, my father asking me to look into the woods as we were driving. "Look for deer' he would say, and my brother Curtis and I would look out into the forests and pasture land  of northern Minnesota or Wisconsin. We would log miles and hours looking out into the passing landscape. My father was always the best at this, spotting even the smallest movement or patch of grey-brown in the distance, the ditch, or amongst the trees. My brother and I would marvel when our father would even spot the small reflections of eyes in the ditches at night. The landscape would pass us by, and our  minds would wander - eventually to slumber in the back seat of our  Chevy Impala station wagon.

I am always looking. I enjoy peering through the forest of trees, or out toward the  passing pasturelands as I drive. I find a significant amount of happiness, and solitude when I look outward into the distance. This simple act has had a profound impact on me. I have grown to understand this simple act of looking out - has fueled most of  my artistic investigations. My paintings are for me places where I can layer up patterns and structures to create avenues and passages into depth. The gaps, negative spaces, and overlapping patterns create a mysterious environment to explore, to wander into.

My wandering into the distance- through the landscape of my native Minnesota, has helped me to realize that as I am looking outward, my mind often portages inward. The act of looking outward, is mirrored - and I have grown to rely on these self reflective moments. I seek them out, and have worked to reproduce them in my paintings over the years. These new works are mandalas about this inward/outward experience. I hope they are assemblages where someone may be compelled to look, to question, and to experience an act of visual passage.

Hidden Beneath: layers, geological time, representation, obfuscation, and discovery

I am intrigued by patterns - patterns and textures of surfaces. I find myself looking for them in our visual culture, it's as if I am excavating some glimpses of memorable textures from the visual chaos that I experience every day. I remember seeing the surfaces of billboards close-up years ago when I was a billboard painter. I remember thinking of the work that someone committed to in making a huge, hand-painted sign or billboard. Billboard imagery was created quickly, and was visible only for a short period of weeks, before being painted over by another image. The surfaces were degraded and often weathered by the seasons of my local Minnesota weather. They were the surfaces of peeling paint, flaking paper postings, half-visible letterforms, and faded colors. Sometimes the paint chips had hundreds of tiny layers of color - much like the agates of Lake Superior. I remember thinking about the time that was contained in those small colorful chips - of the moments when someone decades before painted on this surface, in this space. Occasionally, I would be surprised find a small chip with pieces of different layers chipped away, revealing some strange, surprising, combination of images. I think it was then that I became aware of the expanse of time - one part of the chip from years before, and another from just last week. I also remember adding my own story to the visual geology of the billboards, I know some of the images that I painted then, still remain hidden, somewhere. I see this work being connected to those moments. I try to work a sense of layered time into these pieces and allow the viewer to experience the archaeology of viewing a fragmented piece - and the joy of discovering some unexpected connection and meaning through the work. I hope this encourages people to imagine what came before, and what may be beneath.

5/15/2017 Artist Statement

This week, the theme of artist statement writing came up again in the Studio Coffee discussion. I thought I'd give it another try with this new work. I typically write one with every new set of paintings - then another one every 2-3 years from more of a macro point of view. These last paintings (finished Dec 2016) have really beat me up.

I have worked on these since the summer of 2014, and 3 of the 9 painting series never resolved. Each day, I reacted to what I painted the day before - building up layers over time, creating a dialog between now, and then. The work seemed most to me like a musical improvisation - one tone, rhythm, pattern, or contrast, reacting to the others. I don't think I really ever gave myself permission to paint in this way - to really paint as I would create music - I have been a musician for a long time. Part of the joy that I find in making music is in the connections that someone makes with another musician - while playing together. That dialog evolves and defines the musical passage or piece.

Since the completion (Dec 2016) of my most recent series, I see how my paintings recall for me the endless stream of images that I see on my phone, the television, media - I must see hundreds or even thousands of images in a day, a week? It occurs to me that what I am really becoming aware of is time passing. Like in a film, a sequence of images flickers past my eyes. Billboards (I was a billboard painter), ads, television, smartphone, social media, video games, selfie photos, endless list of posts, likes, and reactions inundate my perception - streaming in and stringing back, falling away from the ever changing present.

Painting in layers stops that for me - each layer a gathered fragment - each painting a collection of inter-connected moments. I recently saw some work where an artist (Jason Shulman) combined all the scenes of a film into one image - an atmospheric, time-lapse-like, single image that represented the film in a way that time was really visible in the forefront. I think that I too am developing an awareness of this compressed-time through these paintings. I wonder if all the streams of data that we are leaving behind - the pictures, posts, likes, reactions - the data of our lives, is going to be lost? I think that my work becomes a sort of visual archaeology - I find myself looking for, remembering, and reacting to these visual fragments. This dialog happens in the paintings, and I often realize that I am seeing a cloud of moments, places, glimpses, and memories.

Work on updated statement

New 8/10/16:Been doing some writing to help me to clarify the work that I have been making these past 10 years or so. My dear colleague, Melissa Borman came to the studio last week and in our conversation gave me some great feedback! It was also nice that my long time friend and paint partner, Ed Charbonneau was there as well and we got into it as well! A great time talking art. So, I thought I'd post some of the writing that I am doing

Some Notes: My work is about the inward facing atmosphere that can be gleaned through juxtaposition and the convergence of multiplicity. Weather I am working between moments in a reactionary way, or deliberately combining multiple patterns, images, or data, I believe the limbo-esque state that exist in-between moments of action, or the juxtaposition of sets of data, reflects the true nature of how we understand the world. In our world, we are tracked and studied through online analytics - gathered hourly, monitored, trends are identified, and assumptions are made. This data is interesting in itself. How the data changes to create trends does help us to understand future behavior. Is the interpretation of this data and the fascination with it creating a new perception of human reality? Are these data piles forming a new definition of what it is to be human? Are more and more people relying on data, trends, and social media feeds to define what is real? Running feeds of desires, statements, philosophies, and arguments leave trails in the topography of our outward facing lives. Can some of these trends point to an outward-facing identity, a sense of self that is increasingly becoming reduced to false statements of fact, slogans, posturing, image, and observational relationship? My work brings some of these outward assurances together in one place and space to jumble through and past one another. Through this juxtaposition of layering, spaces, and comparison, a cloud of meanings and interpretations that more accurately portrays the beautifully chaotic world that we live in forms like the steam on a mirror.Rejecting singular definitions of self, society, culture, and place, for multiple ideas, possibilities, potential realities. These populate a atmospheric clouds of collective understanding that defy any singular constraining definition or measurement.
I am a painter with a background in Visual Studies, Music, and Public Art. In spite of our necessary belief in the traditional definitions of time, space, and present-ness, our definitions continue to evolve. Our concept of self, and our perception of physical reality is ever changing, being reinterpreted, and broadened as we come to terms with multiplicity in our social interactions and projections, constructions, and in physics.

Of Landscape

Thinking today about time, place, image and reality. With all that we know now about place, time and our perceptions of that, how would I create a landscape that could be true to that? I mean, if I were to try not to create a monocular view of the world, a modernist singular view, then what would that look like? I think it must be multi layered; at least with multiple quantities considered. Take, for instance the traditional norms of the western landscape. Broad , majestic vistas, beautiful light, important objects (buildings, flowers, trees, fields... etc.) are captured in a way that has become over time canonistic. This cannon is a singular view locked into a representation from a singular translator, moved by emotion, light, and lore of place. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, except I think that there is so much more about that place that is depicted, on so many micro and macro levels. I should make an attempt to acknowledge those bits of information.
On my journey, I encounter micro and macro realities, the strange anomalies of sub-atomic particles, realism, idealism, mapping, theories of existence, emotion/perception, hidden realities, multi-dimensional reality,  pluralism, fractals, and I react to these things in my current work to create a landscape that is a reaction and dialog with these realities of contemporary existence.

Labyrinth, GPS, Wayfinding, and Work

Just a little note, I am working on a new body of work soon to be released. I have expanded onto Facebook working to post there, some recent paintings. This new process seems to be working well and I am considering posting regular updates here and on Facebook regarding my progress.
I am collecting:
Leaf patterns
GPS coordinates of those patterns
360 degree panoramic video of the location
spoken journal

Wayfinding...

So, I've dropped out a bit lately. I've been doing research about Labyrinths and what they might have to do with my work. Progress is slow, the studio is still calling. I've 3 paintings started, working hard to help realize them. If you get a second, check our www.labyrinthsociety.org for information. You can always trust a Labyrinth.

Shifting

This week has presented interesting avenues. I am constantly encouraged by my colleagues and my students to keep searching for the next thing...sometimes that thing isn't really 'next' but might be 'beside' or 'behind'. I wonder often about how linearly we are conditioned to think and experience the world. The next thing must follow after this current thing...I'm beginning to realize that the next thing might just be next to me or beside me, concurrently and present already. It is my conciousness that shifts, not my logic or any pre-scripted step, to bring me onto the new avenue.

Painting, surface and time.

I was wondering about time again today. Layering and multiplicity in painting seem to be the key. Also, when I see a painting from history, I often imagine surface as capturing something of the moment when the mark was made. Smells, movement, even body language of the artist all evident in the surface of the painting. After all, mark after mark, moment after moment that painting was created. The final work is a culmination of a series of moments captured in the material and the image. I wonder if that is the only way that I can achieve, capture or express time in a painting...