Artist: Darren Johnson

Darren Johnson's exhibition titled Important Conversation in Midwestern Brown is currently on display as part of the Nevada Arts Council.  

Like his earlier works Of The Overwhelmed and In Position, he creates realistic unposed portraits of people.  

In this newest exhibit, comic bubbles create a dialogue between subjects.  

These basic conversations speak volumes and open to interpretation the context, as well as the subjects,  creating the effect of a voyeur mesmerized by overheard smidgens of conversations.

All the backgrounds are done in simple earth tones- From The Artist Statement: 

The bleak emptiness of their brown surroundings speaks to their own emptiness, their seeming lack of significance to the world around them, and their alienation from it. These figures are the people I know: Midwestern, middle-class Americans each with their own stories and shared struggle. They find themselves awkwardly cropped in both composition and dialogue so as to share the discomfort with the viewer. 

The dialogues include English, Mandarine and braille.  

From The Artist Statement:

Talk, as in what is said, what isn’t said, how much is said, who says it, to whom, and why – more wholly, communication. The sort of communication that stomps out silence and peace with the need to exhaust one’s frustration with the commonly unfulfilling, lonely nature of contemporary life.

I laughed out loud at more than once at some of these paintings.

To view upcoming shows, other works and pricing information 

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Darren Johnson