Artospective: Paintings by Johnny Thornton from New York.

Series “Self Portraits of Other People”

An Interview with Johnny Thornton.

Who and from where are you?

My name is Johnny Thornton, I was born in Connecticut and I live in Brooklyn, NY.

How you got into this?

When I was younger I was always interested in painting but I didn’t begin until I was in my early 20’s. I went on the study art at the University of Arizona and then at Parsons in New York City. Since I graduated I have been working out of my artist studio in Brooklyn.

What is your driving force?

Exploring ideas through process.

What kind of work you do and why?

My work is always exploring an idea or concept I am trying to explore and understand. My most recent work is the series “Self Portraits of Other People” is a series that explores the constructed idea of "self". I have always had an interest in different strategies of representation and my recent paintings are an amalgamation of both figurative and semi-abstract representations of the human form in ways that illustrate the contrasting elements of the physical and psychological identity. It is the first time I’ve experimented with combining different ways of seeing and representing the body. The layer I paint is just the human form of someone removed of all contextual signifiers aside from the title of the piece, which is the number of days they have been alive. This process takes a very long time because I am trying to accurately represent the body in a photorealistic way. Once the painting is complete I do a one-minute blind contour drawing of the same person on top of it with an oil stick. This second, cathartic layer allows me to relinquish control and inject my own immediacy and subjectivity onto the portrait. This act is the most exhilarating experience imaginable: spending 50-100 hours on something and then blindly and permanently covering it with a different interpretation of the same reference image in under a minute.