Be the Ball by Johnny Johnston
Entire planets collapsing and combusting in time as inhabitants fly through the darkness we once referred to as a cosmos.
Brass bellows jazz fusion as bamboo quivers in octave squeals of passion and anger, like these cities lonely streets, tonight and every night. Junked, plunked strings wrenched and bent in tension scream long, loud and sharp, bleeding in sorrow, erupting into a crescendo igniting a cacophony of life in this city,
Then drops with sounds sinking slowly, ever so softly beneath a sturdy smooth rhythm, ethereal in a sense but aware of those things which lurk in the night.
This is Detroit, a once was but now lost in despair wasteland. Trampled under greed and social engineering, a city where few who gave and the ones who took parted ways. Where laws preached by political thieves invested in life’s dead ends, leached upon he who struggled, taking and feeding a city of sluggards. Burned out cars, abandoned children and bodies dumped, in empty streets, dark alleys and open fields, a city rotting and abandoned.
Glass, steel, concrete, axils, engines and generations of proud workers once noticed and revered, now looked down upon, ignored, pushed back in the shadows of ruin and abandonment,
Where ceramic pipes charred black, works bent or busted and skunk scented blunts inhaled, transport youthful children of this workers proud past and hard fought respect into toxic dreams of riddled destruction, lost hope and lives with no substance, desires or future.
http://johnny-johnston.artistwebsites.com
Title of work:
Be the Ball
Size of work ( either cm or inches) 24″x36″
Style :Abstract expressionism
Technique, Medium & material used Canvas and acrylic
Well Johnny, I love your writing! It is so very powerful and truthful. Okay, as soon as I saw your image, I felt the confidence with which you paint and write but I didn’t see Detroit. Rather the dissolution of a symbolic person and this may be your intention to represent Detroit this way! Aside from your writing completely, your composition is very powerful. You have developed authenticity in the way you work. I can feel the motions of your knife, brush or other tools. There is no hesitation. Overall the composition is well balanced, has a rhythm and the tones and colors work well. It feels like this work may be one of a series! Thanks so much for your submission and I look forward to seeing more of your art work.
Thank you for the comment accompanying this piece. Your sense of composition is beautifully defined in this work. The subject is thought provoking and is complimented by your statement. The overall impact leaves the viewer with an imprint of the image in his or her mind that has the strength to remain vivid over time. Very well done.