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You are here: Home / Archives for art inspired by travel

Introducing the Travelers Suite | A New Affordable Print Series for the Holidays

December 4, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

River House landscape by Iskra
“River House,” Archival pigment print © Iskra Johnson

Greetings from the road! I have begun to travel for the first time in years, with my eyes far away. I hardly remember how to pack my bags, much less a passport, so I am starting with what’s close, Portland and Victoria, within easy flight for a windblown gull. It has been a difficult couple of months. Many of you know that my mother passed away in September. It was a wrenching loss, and her life and passing are chronicled in my remembrance here and in the obituary written by the New York Times. My mother was a writer and activist, and her last book, published at 85, was her traveler memoir, titled Seeing for Myself: A Political Traveler’s Memoir. This coming year is dedicated to her memory, and to her adventurous spirit.

From a series called “Traveler”, the new prints here are inspired by the mind state of journeys far and near. Portals, gates, trains, sky, the glimpse from the window as scenes overlay with memory and time and possibility expands. These are multiple exposure images begun in my phone as a glimpse of “something” – captured in a split second and later reflected upon. A double exposure is an acknowledgment that we are never in just one place in time. The exposure is random, but not. Always there is the chance of unexpected poetry in how images blend and collide. You can ask yourself questions like: is the composition balanced? Is there a contrast of dark and light and shapes and mood? Or you can ask the existential version: 1) When is a splatter a flight of birds? 2) When is a blur a memory? 3) When is a memory a lie? 4) When is a lie the truth…..

The new series is printed in affordable editions of 50 with an image size of 12 x 16 on 17 x 22 sheets of German Etching. The prints are sold unframed in my shop for $150 including shipping. I welcome studio visits for local friends and art lovers. Take a look and let me know what you think. (Click through on each image to view large scale and in situ.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Digital Collage, Prints Tagged With: art inspired by travel, creative digital printmaking, double exposure, travel photography, Traveler Suite Print Series

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Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: I added baking soda to my gesso. Pretty wild texture here, not sure yet how stable it is. You can see the test of the edges in the second piece— the rugged edge only works if I get a pristine background and unfortunately the tape I used to mask it did not work consistently. Hello tape, my old friend and nemesis. You work differently on every surface. These little barn structures give me great comfort as the bigger structures of our government and nation seem to be crumbling.
Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the fields somewhere, on the road to Edison. Acrylic on prepared ground, sketchbook.
MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai We MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei at Seattle Art Museum.
I am thinking this morning about the phrase Americ I am thinking this morning about the phrase American Heartland. Learning to paint a barn means studying the neutrals. Our political discourse has pitted the barn people against the city people and there are no neutrals, just shouting. But if you walk out into the horizon lands, all you hear is the wind and a kestrel. Walk in boots, hard-pressed against your toes, walk on stubble barefoot and get acupuncture for a lifetime. Study the intervals: how the clouds can be in the upper one third neatly or one sixth, precarious, the future disappearing with the sun as it falls making the barn your whole world if you’re three years old and looking up; one big triangle with a square in the center, and so many mysteries inside the square. 

There is also the question of what kind of light seeps between the verticals and is the light coming in the evening or at midday when you can finally begin to make out all the other tiny squares within the big square, which would be called hay. Reach for the rope and swing out over the canyon, that great big canyon from bale to bale.

Collage studies: painting neutrals
A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yor A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yorker this morning, about the global population crash. This will upend urbanism, for sure, though it will very good for veterinarians and dog groomers:
“Only two communities appear to be maintaining very high fertility: ultra-Orthodox Jews and some Anabaptist sects. The economist Robin Hanson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that twenty-third-century America will be dominated by three hundred million Amish people. The likeliest version of the Great Replacement will see a countryside dotted everywhere with handsome barns.”
First Thursday. Such a beautiful night. First Thursday. Such a beautiful night.

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