WA L K
Golden Gallery Cotton Exchange
311 North Front Street, 910-762-4651, www.thegoldengallery.com
“Storm Tossed”
Original watercolor
and giclee prints.
Mary Ellen Golden’s
official 40th
anniversary print.
The Golden Gallery
opened on
December 7, 1977.
Eclipse Artisan Boutique
For Sale By Owner
More than 100 local and
regional artisans:
203 Racine Drive, 910-799-9883,
EclipseArtisanBoutique.com
Hand Sculpted
Low Back Chair
Walnut and gaboon
ebony accents
30 inches high, 25 inches wide,
22 inches long
(seat height 18.5 inches)
$3,200
Large, original, framed Dominican/Haitian painting circa 1997.
42 inches by 31 inches.
Can be inspected by appointment only,
at 7232 Wrightsville Avenue, Ste. D, Wilmington, NC
Contact: Pat Bradford 910-367-1137 or 910-256-5830
55
huge, hourglass-shaped sculpture. I wanted to tackle it as
soon as I saw it.”
The piece Johnson later created is photo-realistic and
zeroes in on a segment of the sculpture, a bright red acous-tic
guitar in the foreground, with several differently colored
electric guitars and a violin comprising the background. The
artist created delicate highlighting along the planes of the
instruments and rendered subtle reflections of light in their
smooth, flat surfaces. Her color palette is bold, bright and
highly saturated, calling to mind the vibrancy of the music
and musicians immortalized in the sculpture.
The detail and subtlety of application in “String Puzzle”
seems lovingly composed. This is not surprising, given the
familial connection Johnson has to music and the technical
puzzle that the piece posed for her.
“That was so experimental and something very different
for me to try,” she says. “We have a lot of musical background
in my family. I play the
guitar and my daughter
is very musical, so that
piece really inspired me.”
Johnson describes
herself as entrenched in
“evolution mode,” experi-menting
with style and
technique and assuaging
a voracious desire to learn
more about the medium.
“I’m experimenting
and trying to challenge
myself with styles, con-tent
and subject matter,”
she says. “I’m trying to
find myself, to learn what
I most enjoy doing and
what people respond to.”
Whether photo-real-istic,
wildly gestural, or
somewhere in between,
Johnson’s pastel paint-ings
are captivating and
impressive to look at. Her
experimental and inquisi-tive
relationship to the
medium imbues each
piece with an exciting
and enthusiastic energy
that is contagious to the
viewer.
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