When my print arts salon, Painters Under Pressure, suggested we do the Seattle Sampling December studio tour it was. . . . July. No sweat, plenty of time! Now we are all in that wonderful pre-show manic state of trying to make art round the clock while life in its inconvenient way interferes. Laundry? Bookkeeping? The Gym? Huh. I have never made so much work in such a compressed period of time. I think the happiest state, the state of mind I treasure most, may be just pure focus, and I’m there, even if I am wearing last week’s socks. [Read more…]
Search Results for: almanac
Capturing Incandescence with Digital Printmaking: An Homage to Dürer
Although I am a avid gardener, the kind of gardener who intentionally plants things with an eye to color and texture and contrast and who pulls out weeds, I have to confess that my very favorite flower in the world is the dandelion. I have been trying to capture dandelions since I was about three, when I was first photographed eating them, which I will say was much less satisfying than blowing them and watching the seeds fly up into the air.
In July I took some photographs of a particularly expressive weed against the crumbling wall of a parking lot, and the image has been murmuring to me ever since. It was an exquisite morning spent in the company of my mother and old books. Somehow the grainy pages of her 1930’s Latin primer and a distant memory of a print by Albrecht Dürer came together in this image.
![Dandelion for Dürer, By Iskra Johnson, archival digital print](https://iskrafineart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Dandelion-for-Durer-Iskra-FIne-Art-600x600.jpg)
My scale with the current Almanac series of botanical work is intimate. This print is 8″ square. My intention is to make a second image in which the photographic elements are directly transferred into the plaster which forms the background. It has been a very challenging piece, composed of at least a dozen “plates” ie. Photoshop layers, on which I have drawn and erased and shaded with my digital tools. It is slightly crazy to try to convey incandescence with low contrast, but everything about the original moment when I saw this beloved weed was about innocence and light and the uncapturable haze of memory—which is a quiet place. Perhaps I should let Robert Creeley explain, from his poem “The Immoral Proposition”:
If quietly and like another time there
is the passage of an unexpected thing.
To look at it is more
than it was.
New Directions with Italian Plaster
After my inspirational time with Jennifer Carrasco I am diving into the new/old technique of Italian plaster and reveling in what happens when you let surface speak. In the past I’ve tended to get nervous when I spend a lot of time making a surface to paint or draw on. The calligrapher in me wants to have a stack of a hundred sheets of paper and nothing to lose by drowning in ink, again and again, and throwing whatever happens on the floor for later reflection. The word “precious” comes up when I think of sanding and painting and sanding again and then glazing and . . . then trying to put something down on such a huge investment of time.
If you are a recovering calligrapher or watercolorist you know this tyranny of the perfect sheet of rag paper. With a pristine sheet of BFK or $20 rice paper there is really nowhere to go but [Read more…]
Mixed Media
I approach painting as a printmaker, and I am as likely to use a brayer as a brush. I use watersoluble printing inks, watercolor and acrylic, working on paper or prepared grounds on panel. My style is driven by content, and it may change as the subject matter dictates. My most recent work brings paint, image transfer and old-world patina together in a modern approach to classical botanical art.
Each series below links to a gallery of paintings for you to explore.
Modern Botanical | Mixed Media
on Plaster
In this ongoing series I use photography and mixed media to pay homage to nature and the classical origins of botanical art. The series started originally with the title, “The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena.” As an avid gardener I am mesmerized by the fleeting miracles of plant forms. You can read more about this series and the process of doing these one-of-kind panels on my blog.
From the Sea | Paintings
Paintings on panel inspired by the sea and the architecture of shells
Sleep Studies | Archive
A series of intimate paintings on the theme of sleep, created under the influence of junkyards, hotel rooms and the folkart architecture of the graveyards of Mexico, the ultimate resting place.
The House | Archive
The house as icon, refuge, and home of memory.