I use Holbein oil paint on masonite.  The board is sized, cut with a saw and sanded.   As a primer, gesso is combined with acrylic black paint to make a medium gray and several coats are painted onto the masonite and sanded between each layer.

Oils are suited to my temperament since you can glob it on thick and quick or paint thin and methodically, whatever mood you are in at the time. You can’t make mistakes with oils because you can always paint over it and I like that since each painting is an experiment.

"Apple Harvest"

I started out as an Impressionist painter because of the influence of my father, Bob Johnson, who was a painter and sculptor, and also because of Sergei Bongart.  I was a scholarship student of this wild Russian painter and though I loved his style of painting, I soon discovered it was not for me since I became interested in more detail within the paintings.  Fortunately, he introduced me to the work of Kathe Kollwitz and Andrew Wyeth.  And then I discovered Vermeer, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and William Bouguerreau.

In the early ’70′s it was almost taboo to be a realist, but I eventually chose that path.  Though now after so many years, I consider myself a realist-impressionist since I love the brush stroke and color of impressionism as well as the detail of realism.  Yet even within a realistic painting there should have an abstract design within the composition.  There are passages of light and shadow within a painting that can be compared to the highs and lows within a symphony.   If there is too much white, it sounds like a painting with only high notes and the same goes for the low notes.  There should be an interplay of opposites.  The trick is to see the complexity within simple forms.  It is boring if there is too much repetition in music, and annoying if it is too busy and the same is with a painting.  An artist may have great technical skill, but if there is no passion it feels as though it were executed by a machine.  Yet if there is no technical skill, it is as though the painting were made by a child.

So Technique is essential in a good painting, but a great painting is inspirational and can only come with having a child-like sense of exploration and abandonment.

Recently I read a quote from Picasso that I could relate to:

“It takes a long time to become a child again.”

Marnie Johnson

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