Riverland Community College

Johnston’s work has often combined images, textures and other visual remnants from multiple viewpoints and places. In this new work, Johnston is especially interested in the ambiguity found in the map-like quality of tree leaf canopy patterns.  These patterns are in one; a pattern gathered from a specific location and a pattern that suggests randomness or non-specificity. His work process involves traveling to various points in the landscape, capturing a photograph of a tree leaf pattern, documenting the GPS coordinates, and logging any meteorological data and personal thoughts. The seemingly ambiguous abstract qualities of the tree leaf patterns disguise the very specific nature of the paintings; these are patterns taken from very specific points in very specific locations with specific narratives. Johnston is currently inspired by the works of Sigmar Polke, Ingred Calame, Franz Ackermann, Arturo Herrera, Takashi Murakami, and Julie Mehretu

Neil Johnston holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and a Master of Fine Arts Visual Studies in painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Neil has been commissioned by private collectors and corporations for many paintings and local murals. His work is collected by local patrons such as Medtronic Inc., Hines International and recent collaborative work in the Century College Library.

Neil teaches Painting 1, Painting 2, Drawing 1, 2D Design, Art History of the Western World 1, and Art History of the Western World 2 at Century College.

 A statement from the Artist

I believe that my formative artistic years as billboard painter in the Twin Cities, Minnesota taught me quite a bit about the nature of images, especially the huge and over-powering, the slick and beautiful, and most critically, the subversively seductive. I entered my college years (BFA Painting, College of Visual Arts, MFA Visual Studies Painting, MCAD) with an obsessive fascination for this type of imagery. Since then, I have developed a method of artistic investigation that allows me to question traditional definitions of image and meaning. Through my work, I find myself trying to define what painting has to do with space, place, and time among a culture full of slick, persuasive imagery. 

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Looking back, this questioning attitude has moved through my career. I have presented exhibitions with themes that relate to the work that I am creating now. My work over the years has really been asking the ontological questions; “where am I?”, “how do I know that?”, and “what is the meaning of image?” My work is an investigation of the painted image in a world of inter-connected visual realities, a layered existence filled with people, technologies, and scale transformations interjecting, integrating, and radically expanding on all levels of existence. Now that imagery is used and can be shared at a level like never before, I believe our concepts of ‘reality’, ‘now’ and ‘present’ are also changing and in flux. If this is so, then when I make an image in paint, how can I respond to this new reality?

My current paintings use patterns that I collect while looking up through leaves in tree canopies and maps of locations that I visit. The patterns are very site specific, yet out of context; they can appear as either organic or geometric abstractions. I collect the data that would normally be associated with a traditional landscape painting: my thoughts and feelings, the temperature, elevation and light quality. I log these places with GPS coordinates and use a web-based mapping applications to plot the location. These patterns give me an entrance point or map for navigating my multiformed painting process and when finished, these paintings appear to be random yet rational, organic yet technological, active yet static, and painterly yet technological. Although these patterns are images of very specific places, on specific days, with very specific narratives, the patterns are simultaneously specific and ambiguous.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Believe only half of what you hear and none of what you see”? Similarly, Barnum said, “there is a sucker born every minute”. Images seem to be our grounding and ever-present condition yet can be our navigation or salvation in this ever-increasingly complex visual world; images map our realities. I believe that I respond to and explore this contemporary conundrum of space and time comprehension through my painting. I believe that my work is more than just a new concept of landscape; it is also a new depiction of place, perspective and identity.