Ross Johnston: Hollywood Fantasies
Gallery One

Ross Johnston grew up obsessed with pop culture and all things Hollywood. Never having fully recovered from this fixation, he uses this milieu as a basis for comment on social phenomena. Using images from the past to comment on the present, he attempts to convey his somewhat skewed vision of the world. His interests, however, vary widely, and this is reflected in the variety in subject matter, from advertising to homoerotica, to comics, television, and movies. Drawings are created on Stonehenge paper, using blended colored pencil. Although realistic in appearance, no photographs are used in the finished piece. These drawings are then mounted onto foam core and placed inside hand-made box frames, with a depth of between one to four inches. To explain the works more accurately, they are like dioramas or shadow boxes, in that separate and cutout original drawings are placed at different depths within the deep frame. Looking at the images in our gallery, you may have noticed the shadows that indicate this. With the originals, you will enjoy more details in the work that are not viewable in the pictures online. 

Although the style is photo-realism, the finished work resembles a 3-D movie still of the object, rather than the event itself. "In my work I attempt to capture the feel of Technicolor, the film process used during the 1940's and 50's that brought us life as we wanted it to be, not as we truly knew it to be." Working in a colored pencil medium, he ultimately constructs three-dimensional art works which give a provocative expression to each creation. Drawing from pop-culture imagery, some with satiric or erotic overtones, Johnston's work explores varied aspects of past and present social phenomena.

Ross Johnston is a self-taught artist born into an artistic family in Champaign, Illinois. After relocating to Chicago he began perfecting his unique style of photo-realism. Now residing in Madison, Wisconsin, his work has been displayed at galleries throughout the USA.

For more information or to purchase, please email us
(Please keep in mind that because the original works
were photographed, shadows from the frames or 
variations in lighting may show up on the larger
 images. But colors are accurate)

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