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New Forest Card Designs and Sketching the Future

January 17, 2024 by Iskra 2 Comments

Black and White Windows Sketchbook

The New Year has come in with a roar of ice, snow, rain and broken pipes. It seemed fitting to learn to mix the colors of January, although washing paint out of my brushes has been difficult with frozen pipes! Above is the first spread of my new industrial sketchbook, through which I hope to learn to paint some of my many obsessions: backs of trucks, kiosks, factories and scaffolds and the ever changing sky which they reflect. To move myself from the digital world fully into the work of paint I have joined the #InsightCreative30DayChallenge2024, brilliantly guided by Cheryl Taves. I met Cheryl about 4 years ago when I visited her studio with friends on Vancouver Island. Her studio and process was a revelation, and I knew I wanted to continue a connection. Through her coaching at Insight Creative, the Sketchbook Challenge brings together artists from all over the world to create audience and accountability for taking risks and finding ones own vision. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abstract Calligraphy, Botanical Art Cards, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Iskra Sketchbooks & Journals Tagged With: #InsightCreative30DayChallenge2024, Artist Sketchbook, botanical greeting cards, Forest Prints, Iskra Fine Art Shows, Seattle artists, Spotlight North Studio Tour

Save the Date for Colorbath! Iskra at Taste | SAM

July 9, 2018 by Iskra Leave a Comment

The Harbor Iskra at Taste Restuarant at SAM
“Harbor Morning,” mixed media archival pigment print, 36 x 36″ © Iskra Johnson

Summer, finally! I’ve been immersed for months in new ways of looking at color and light, and finally what I have been seeing in my minds’ eye has unfurled in front of me. What turns a mere boat into a “vessel” is the fleeting moment of refraction. In my spring wanderings through freezing shipyards that light was not always easy to find. Often I would return home from Salmon Bay and Harbor Island with hundreds of classic northwest gray-green photographs, all cast in the steely gaze of cloudcover. Occasionally a well-honed wind would scrape the sky, leaving blue shards on the water and astonishing bits of gold. One evening iridescent swallows flew through from the bridge. Two raptors shrieked courtship from the highest masts, offering what seemed like a lovers’ benediction.

 

The Golden Rope Photography by Iskra The Wrapped Ship photograph by Iskra Composition with Sail maritime photograph by Iskra

Journal Entry: The shipyard on Sunday. Men playing guitars on derelict balconies, men riding yellow bikes, men rising shirtless and surprised from the hulls of tugboats unshaven and lurching but still afloat. The wooden planks, the seams of trees that run out into the waves parallel, almost indistinguishable. Then the five alarm fire of a red buoy hanging off the Maudie Mae and its shadow and the starburst within the shadow.

The Red Buoy Iskra PhotographyInspiration photos from Salmon Bay.

As a photo-based printmaker I start with the camera. The photograph is the diving platform. From that reality-based ledge I go into a world of improvisation, working with layers of paint to create a completely new world. Colorbath goes farther into abstraction and paint than I have gone before, and opens up exciting new directions for the future.

Please mark your calendar for Thursday August 9th and join me for a reception for Colorbath, from 6-7:30 at Taste Restaurant, Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101. I will have nine new large works ranging in size from 30 x 30″ to 30 x 40″. They will be posted for preview on the SAM Gallery site and in my portfolios soon.

Blue Buoys detail Iskra at Taste“Blue Buoys” (section), © Iskra Johnson

 

Postscript:

I was a lake swimmer for years. I fell in love with my first tugboat when I was 17 and stayed up 24 hours listening to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert while looking at rust and tires on the Duwamish. Some of the people who actually spend their lives working on boats feel the same way. If you have an hour or two to get lost at sea visit these folks at Maritime Family. All I can say is WOW.

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Prints Tagged With: Colorbath, Iskra Fine Art Shows, mixed media printmaking, SAM Gallery in August, seattle art openings, Taste Restaurant

Last Week to See Painters Under Pressure at Phinney Gallery

April 24, 2013 by Iskra Leave a Comment

"Bird," Archival Pigment Print © Iskra Johnson
“Bird,” Archival Pigment Print © Iskra Johnson

This is the last week to see “Painters Under Pressure” at Phinney Gallery. The show comes down May 1. “Bird” is one of a dozen prints I have in the show. I do hope you will come by and see the work!

First formed as a Seattle Print Arts Salon Group, Painters Under Pressure has met for over 10 years to discuss and support the development of each others’ artwork. Each of us approach our printmaking from a painterly background and use the pressure of printmaking techniques to produce our varied styles of work. This exhibition brings together works resulting from the last 10 years of critique and camaraderie from these 6 artists: Ruth Hesse, Stephen MacFarlane, Tracy Simpson, Jon Taylor, Iskra Johnson, and David Owen Hastings.

Phinney Center Gallery Hours:
Monday – Friday 9am – 9pm
Saturday, 9am – 2pm

The Phinney Gallery
6532 Phinney Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Prints Tagged With: Bird Print, Iskra Fine Art Shows, Painters Under Pressure, Phinney Gallery, Photo collage Bird, VisualPoetry

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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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