Robert James Johnson

rjjartinbox@gmail.com

rjjart.com

817.975.8353

New Mexico’s environment is just irresistible. My oil colors make no attempt at replication, but I do like to share my interpretations through loose abstractions. It is always a challenge and a pleasure to paint what surrounds us.

With cyanotype photography and printing I’m able to explore monochromatic images on a variety of papers, wood, canvas, and glass including skyscapes, landscapes, closeups of the familiar and unfamiliar, as well as collage/composite images. The formulation to make a cyanotype is nearly 200 years old and is environmentally friendly. A two part light sensitive mixture is applied to a substrate, contact printed in the sun, and washed in water to reveal a Prussian Blue image. Compounding the fun is the final process of toning that blue image. Tannin rich liquids as in coffee, tea, red wines, peppermint, and juniper, all are able to change that blue image to a variety of steel blues and browns.

My collage/composite cyanotype prints are assembled from my own images, historical and public domain photographs, comic book phrases and advertising characters and tropes. These prints are equally an amusing and acidic exercise in juxtaposition; an oblique, critical, sometimes befuddled bit of commentary on life. Many people are saying, THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.