Doug Johnson
Free Range Artist
Set in Sand
Viewed from space, earth's surface is spinning at 1,000 miles/hour,
our world is orbiting the sun at 67,000 miles/hour
while the whole solar system is speeding around the Milky Way at over half a million miles/hour.
At the molecular level, electrons whirl around hydrogen nuclei at almost two thousand miles/second.
All around us storms pound, waves crash, heat and cold play tug-of-war and the wind howls.
And every now and then, despite all this motion and mayhem,
forms emerge that artist and teacher Paul Klee called the "static exception" --
those ephemeral, illusory moments of calm, order and beauty.
This series tries to capture those "static exceptions."
All the scenes were found and photographed during low tide along a short stretch of the Maine coastline.
A few hours later, they were gone.
Hands
If eyes are the window to the soul, then hands are the window to what?
Freud's "ego"? Creativity? Productivity?
Hands can reveal our race, gender, age and occupation.
They can express sadness, joy, compassion and reverence.
They can create, fix, manipulate and explore.
They can be playful or sensual.
They can communicate our thoughts and feelings.
They can inflict pain or protect us from danger.
The images in this series are "portraits" of hands of people doing things they care about - working, creating, playing. At one level, I'm trying to show the amazing qualities of hands - texture, color, gesture and form. I'm also trying to give a sense of what it might be like to stand beside the person. To imagine what they look like, what they sound like and maybe even what they're thinking.
