DION JOHNSON: GLOW: ART IN URBAN SPACES: Offsite Exhibition at 400 Howard Street

"I recalled summertime family get-togethers when my cousins and I were kids. We loved this specific playground that had a big blue s-curve shaped slide. It was so wide that three of us could ride down side by side at the same time. Sharing the fun was thrilling, and that bright blue seemed to make the slide faster and more exciting. I made four SLIDE paintings, and each work has a different palette."

"In music, sounds from multiple instruments can blend and intertwine to create dynamic sonic spaces. Similarly, I want to paint translucent colors to create layered visual environments. Voile is a fairly large painting in this vein. When I was doing preparatory drawings in Photoshop, trying to nail down an ambitious composition, I was listening to Claude Debussy. One song stood out as particularly airy and active; the music seemed to be in sync with my color choices and the compositional tension of compressing and expanding shapes. The title of the Debussy piece is Voiles referring to translucent veils or wind-blown sails. That’s pretty spot on."

"The first couple of paintings I made in 2025 have slender interlocking shapes that stretch from side to side through the center of the composition. These multi color groupings are oriented on a subtle angle that implies a twisting motion. Above and below the concentrated center activity, pairs of gradient fields seem to accelerate the rotation. I was thinking of a spinning coin’s wobbling angular axis just before it reaches its horizontal resting point. This horizontal space, imbued with a gyroscopic momentum, feels like a nice extension of my current practice and a new color adventure."