Johnson’s portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who died in 2014, sits above her desk. He was an inspiration for and supporter of the Blk Arts Group. Credit… Ekua King.
“I tend to just make a mess.”
(Claudette Johnson)
Artist-blogger OutsideAuthority’s mention of an exhibition of work by Claudette Johnson in Birmingham (England) caused me to discover an article about Johnson’s first solo show in New York last year. These excerpts are from the article.
“When I was younger, I chose pastels as my main medium because they were so quick. I didn’t have to wait for the paint to dry.”
In 2021, Johnson began experimenting with oil paints. She said, “It brings me outside of my comfort zone.” Also, that in her life-size drawings of Black sitters her focus wasn’t on “creating perfect likeness but on capturing a feeling or a presence… Often the heads are cut off, or parts of them are missing, as if you just bumped into the person.”
Johnson often uses bold reds, yellows and blues as a rebellion against the gray and muted palette she loosely associates with the Bloomsbury Group, the influential 19th-century circle of British artists and writers. Credit… Ekua King.
Nowadays, I prepare a primer on the paper or the canvas and then go straight in. I don’t do preparatory sketches. I tend to just make a mess. Sometimes, it’s a lovely, charmed experience and everything’s more or less where it should be and I feel a rhythm and symmetry — and other times, it goes completely awry. [In reading this I realized how hard it is to give in and “just make a mess,” which inhibits (alas) my being a serious painter. It also reminded me of a comment by novelist George Saunders: “The holy estate of a writer is to be a little confused by what you’re doing.” A fetish for control seems to gravitate against the discipline of creativity, which is to be reckless.]
Asked when she knows when a work is done, Johnson said she doesn’t always know. I like her comment that she realizes that “at the point I keep making changes to a work, I need to make a new work.”
Here’s the last question in the interview, and Claudette Johnson’s answer (the link is worth clicking):
What’s your favorite artwork by someone else?
Rembrandt’s “Young Woman Sleeping” (c. 1654). It does everything I want my drawings to do.
(Kadish Morris, “An Artist Returns After a ‘Long Wilderness’,” New York Times, 3-9-23)
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Attack of the Cosmic Chuckle
I heard that Iris Murdoch said (or wrote), “Everything that comforts is fake.”
Then I read:
According to the best theories available, matter — everything we can see and feel in the universe — should not exist. Every particle of matter comes into being with a doppelgänger, a particle of antimatter (or “antiparticle”) with equal but opposite properties like charge and spin. Whenever a particle and its antiparticle meet, they annihilate each other. Particles and antiparticles can be made in equal measure, but they eventually find and destroy one another, leaving behind nothing.
(Joseph Howlett, “Mining for Neutrinos, and for Cosmic Answers,” New York Times, 9-5-24)
I remembered that Simone Weil said everything we think of as a “human right” (life, liberty, equality, peace, etc.) can be taken away from us. The only inalienable ground we stand upon is awareness of the suffering of others.
Early that same day (Sept. 5, 2024, eighth anniversary of my mother’s death), I saw a cartoon by Gary Lawson. Two portly scientists in white coats, backs to the viewer, stare at a chalkboard filled with equations. In the caption, one of them says, “No doubt about it, Ellington—we’ve mathematically expressed the purpose of the universe. God, how I love the thrill of scientific discovery!” The result of the welter of calculations filling the chalkboard is zero.
Where these several strands lead me is to take issue with Iris Murdoch. Laughter comforts, and is real.
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved