Brendan Johnston

BRENDAN JOHNSTON

On the Cover: TUBURNITUS, Persian Travertine

Shall we make paintings or sculptures? This is a question that many atelier students will consider in their academic training and the artist Brendan Johnston has replied with another question; Why not both? "Painting and sculpture are like the yin and yang of art in the way that they inform each other", said Johnston recently during our conversation from his home on Long Island, N.Y.

"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."

This was said by Miles Davis and he was talking about making music, though artists working within any medium understand the struggle of developing a unique voice. After gaining fluency in the language of light and form a painter is faced with what is perhaps the even more imposing task of choosing what to say. A current exhibition of paintings

by Sarah Bird reveals one artist's fascinating answer to this question.

Arcus, Oil on Linen

Jamaal, Terracotta

Portrait of an Actress, Terracotta

Portrait of Cyrus, Terracotta

Johnston began studying at the GCA in 2008 and while he proved to be highly adept at drawing and painting he was also drawn to the allure of sculpture under the tutelage of Jiwoong Cheh. "Che taught me to think about the aesthetics of tooling and raking the clay. He taught me how to model around forms as opposed to along them. Because the GCA drawing and painting program is focused on constructing form and thinking in three dimensions, sculpture is a very natural and logical addition to the pedagogy. I found it quite easy and informative to go from one medium to the other and then back again.”

After he graduated from the GCA in 2012 Johnston's wife, the celebrated painter Katie Whipple, won the prestigious Alma Schapiro Prize and Johnston accompanied her to a residency in Rome and Florence where his understanding of classical sculpture flourished among the masterworks of Michelangelo. “I spent everyday in museums drawing from his sculptures, while listening to Dante. I knew that Michelangelo had put the Inferno to memory and would often recite verses while he worked. At night I would read about his life, and then in the morning I’d wake up and do it all again. My aim was to try and get inside his head as best I could.” In the years since, Johnston has developed his own aesthetic. In 2019, his painting ‘Arcus’ was exhibited in the BP Portrait Award Show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and in 2022, his sculpture ‘Tiburtinus II’ (cover image) won first place in the Society of Portrait Sculptors Annual show, also in London.

The mastery of classical painting is certainly enough to occupy the entire lifetime of any artist and Johnston's additional pursuit of sculpture is an ambition driven by the unique nature of the medium. “Sculpture is form in three dimensions. It cannot be experienced all at once. One must move around the object and through the space which it occupies. While it’s difficult to look at a photo of a painting on your phone, it’s impossible to experience a sculpture if it’s not in person.”

"Unlike painting, it's not so important for the portrait model to remain still, because I’m constantly adjusting the sculpture from every angle. If they're moving a little or talking I can observe the change in small gestures and expressions and then choose which to emphasize. Maybe I'll notice which eyebrow is raised when they're being thoughtful. Sculptures are a representation of thousands of observed moments of the subject and their emotions. The sculptor blends knowledge of anatomy with the models' individuality. Likeness is found in the structure of the head. The features are the emotional communicators".

Devin, Persian Travertine

The most common approach for realist sculptors is to work in water based clay, and then create a rubber mold from which several plaster casts or bronzes can be produced. Johnston alternatively began a lone investigation into the more delicate and complex historic process of fired clay, known as Terracotta. Working in Terracotta is a particularly high stakes process with little room for error. To be fired, the width of the clay can be no more than 1.5 inches thick and the presence of an air bubble can result in the piece exploding in the kiln and being lost forever. Even among realist sculptors, terracotta as a choice of medium is extremely rare, and it begs the question of why Johnston chose such a challenging material despite the risks and inherent complexities? "I like terracotta because you never lose the original work or art. When a mold is implemented, there is a disconnect between the original clay piece and the final plaster cast or bronze. Terracotta sculptures offer a more direct and immediate record of the artist's hands at work. It reveals the subtle rake marks of the sculptor that are kind of analogous to the brush strokes of a painter. Plaster feels like a dead version of the original piece. With terracotta I'm firing the original object which retains all the nuance and emotion of the process. I also love the medium because it forces me to read and respect the materials."

"A turning point for me was when I went to the Frick and examined Augustin Pajou's terracotta portrait of Elisabeth VigeeLebraun." Johnston was still looking for solutions to some of the basic engineering problems that were inherent in larger pieces made from such a delicate material and the Frick exhibition provided Johnston with the various solutions that past masters had devised. "It was a special exhibition for a select crowd and it gave me the opportunity to physically peek behind the sculptures and examine exactly how they were built ".

Portrait of Cyrus (in progress), Terracotta

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebraun, Augustin Pajou The Frick Museum, New York

Initially, Johnston intended his terracotta as the end goal, but now he's using them to serve as studies for stone carvings. Though marble might be considered the ultimate medium for classical sculptors, Johnston wonders if even the process of transposing a piece from terracotta to marble might result in a loss of subtlety and nuance. "Terracotta is more analogous to drawing in that it's about the nuanced mark making while stone is about the beautifully finished surfaces. Still, marble is really beautiful... it has a translucent quality that holds onto light like nothing else."

While Johnston began his explorations into stone by using the famed marble of Carrara, he has since experimented with more unusual stones such as Persian travertine and Norwegian rose. With each venture into new mediums and techniques, Johnston must rely as much on his own ingenuity and innovations as he does from the limited records and instruction of past masters.

In 2014, a team of artificial intelligence experts from Microsoft designed a software program that analyzed every known painting

by Rembrandt and then aggregated the data to create a new and unique painting in the style of the great Dutch master. Initially skeptical, many classically trained painters were somewhat startled by the convincing results and this led to a growing anxiety within the community and questions about the future impact of A.I. on painters working within old world traditions. "You think painters are worried? Sculptors are being affected even more by CNC machines." says Johnston. Computerized numerical control technology, or CNC, is a rapidly evolving mechanism for scanning and printing objects in three dimensional form. The impact of CNC alone has transformed the industry of Carrara, a small city in Tuscany that for centuries boasted an industry of the world's most adept classical sculptors and craftsmen. "Traditionally, this is where people went to have a bust made of themself from a skilled sculptor by hand, but now they're all giving into the new technology. They'd simply go out of business otherwise." says Johnston. Over the last decade, many of Cararra's famed studios have brought CNC machines and the mastery of traditional methods are in danger of being lost. A subject such as the human head can now be scanned and then produced in a number of materials with minimal effort, and while this is unsettling to many sculptors, Johnston remains resolute in his belief that A.I. can never entirely replace human artistry. "These machines are capturing a moment in time and that's kind of bland to me." Still, the question stands.

Exactly how apparent is the difference between human and A.I. generated artwork, particularly to the untrained eye? After Johnston has spent months laboring and exhausting his back and ligaments to their limits to make a sculpture that a machine could knock off a similar version of in minutes, does he ever doubt the worthiness of his efforts? "I don't know if algorithms will ever be able to replace a human being who is deeply responding to nature in whatever medium they're working within. 3D scans are a kind of sculptural equivalent to photographs. The difference is in the artistry. What makes a portrait by Heather Personett or Zoe Dufour so good is their mastery of skill and execution, and it's also their empathetic response to the subject. When you put all of those elements into making an artwork it results in a sum that is something greater than its parts."

Portrait of Anna Nina, Terracotta

Mazi, Terracotta

The discussion of where the capabilities of artificial intelligence might possibly, and hopefully, fall short of human ability raise yet more questions about the essential nature of art itself. "I think that art is a deeply felt human experience of reality conveyed through physical and material terms." Johnston offers. "When you look at a great work of art you're seeing a record of the immediate decisions that were made by a human being. With A.I. you're losing that vital immediacy. So much of contemporary art over the last seventy-five years has deliberately been about not engaging with the human experience."

Working within a classical tradition can sometimes lead realist artists to feel guarded against accusations of anachronism.

Johnston has considered the problem. "I do sometimes feel that I'm caught in a difficult position. I certainly don't want to throw away the lessons of the past, but I also don't want to make art that I'm not passionate about. The question of how what I'm doing relates to this moment in history is one that haunts me a little. With stone carving I'm using traditional techniques but I'm also using a variety of non-traditional materials and so in that sense I am doing something new." And what of the future of fine art? Is Johnston noticing any promising trends in the market for classical artists? "I am seeing more and more representational art on gallery walls but I have no idea what that means. I'm skeptical of anyone who thinks they can say which way the art world is going”.

The various uncertainties and challenges that all artists face in the world today seem to have no effect on Johnston’s enthusiasm and lifelong commitment to making art. "Art is a way to prolong and intensify the pleasures of engaging with the world. It’s all about mimesis and observing nature for an extended period of time. I hope that what I'm doing encourages people to enjoy the experience of engaging with the world on a deeper level.

That's the magic... that's the love of the game!"

Text by: Michael Fetherston