Dorothy Churchill-Johnson Artist's Statement

My large-scale oils on canvas present the everyday evidence of life in the nooks and crannies of my immediate environment as examples of the timeless universal process of entropy and change. The images point to the ephemeral nature of all human events, from the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement to the torn remnants on signposts of notices that were once timely. I call it instant archaeology in that one can extrapolate from the remnants, the presence and passage of life above. Aspects of the microcosm become metaphors for the macrocosm. Close observation is presented as a tool for understanding the world. I like to emphasize the intersections where man and nature come together.

Pavement and chain link symbolize the ways we separate ourselves. Decaying leaves are juxtaposed with pods of life-bearing fruit to remind us of the ineluctable transitions we all face as organic beings. In my surreal landscape series the light is almost always transitional - either waxing or waning -and, for me, they evoke an alternative world of odd juxtapositions and the sense of being an isolated consciousness in a universe which is chillingly indifferent to individuals.

Like photography, realist painting depends on selective exaggeration. By carefully editing, removing, rearranging or enhancing certain elements and manipulating color, I can idealize an image while maintaining the illusion of random discovery. Beauty plays an important role because beauty is its own excuse for being, but the images emphasize the poignancy of its fleeting nature. Some of the images have a subtly bleak subtext of loneliness and global climate change. It asks the question, "Is the universe friendly and are we in harmony with it?"

Although the paintings are meticulously rendered they have much in common with abstraction in that everything is up to the picture plane with no vanishing point.
Surface, pattern and design are primary. The signpost paintings in particular ironically appear to be collage on a grand scale but the shredded paper and fragmented words mimic abstract painting and leave a mystery to be interpreted. I start all my paintings with a red undercoat and build the image with many layers of thin glazes, sometimes allowing the color underneath to show through. This makes the colors more complex and vibrant. Hopefully, the combination of color and enormous size will make the viewer feel as if he is looking at something previously familiar for the first time.