Johnson: I’m one of those people who rants about the politics I see, but these paintings raise more quiet questions. For me, it’s giving voice to the voiceless.ĪrtsATL: What inspired you to start painting portraits of Civil Rights protesters? When it came time for me to take the art seriously, I had to think about what mattered, so I landed on what for me was the most meaningful statement I could make. It just took over, because whenever I get into anything, I take it very seriously, and I’ve always been a figure and portrait painter. When it came time to choose a career, I went into accounting and computers, and that paid the bills until about eight years ago when I started getting serious about art again. I remember one of the guys used to sleep in a coffin. Originally when I was going to college, I wanted to do art, so I did a summer program at Atlanta College of Art, but I wasn’t impressed with how seriously the other artists took it. 7043 by Bruce Johnsonīruce Johnson: My mom was an art teacher, and my dad worked in software at IBM, so I started doing art from a young age. As he tells ArtsATL, that presence of the past is what propels him to create. Visitors now have the opportunity to see the paintings in the exhibition Exercise in Restraint: Montgomery Civil Rights Portraits at the City of Atlanta’s Gallery 72 through March 29.įor Johnson, the past is very much present when he sees Black Lives Matter protesters being arrested on the news. After two years, he had more than 20 four-by-seven-foot canvases in his garage bearing witness to the nation’s turbulent racial past. ![]() He felt compelled to paint the mugshots and used a torch, grinder, charcoal, screws and wool to render the foot soldiers. Johnson, who was born in Venezuela but calls Atlanta home, was moved by the images and questioned what each person was risking - and what they chanced to gain - by protesting. ![]() Photographer and multimedia artist Bruce Johnson was familiar with the history of the Civil Rights Movement, but when a fellow artist told him that the mugshots of protesters were available online, his relationship with history changed.
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