By day Jeff Johns packages ideas into attractive forms that call from store shelves to human needs around the world. By night he uncorks a darker side and explores themes of what’s-it-all-for-if-never-shared melancholy, coloring far outside the lines until the boundary between life and art ceases to exist. It begins with an impulse and ends in a raw expression that finds Johns using the world around him as both canvas and palette.

A sawed-off chunk of mesh-wrapped wet board salvaged from a work site… the melted remains of a beer bottle snatched from the embers of a backyard fire pit… a generous splash of A-1 steak sauce poured straight from the bottle, bottle included… these are a few of the materials you will find in the work of this Northern Kentucky-based artist. In piece after piece the emotion is palpable; the humor dark yet whimsical; the results arresting. Discarded objects usually fire the process of discovery, followed by raw colors stabbed straight from the tube onto the “canvas,” then manipulated by fingers and brush until emotion gives shape to dimension.

Working in layers and constantly re-processing, re-purposing Johns calls gravity and chance his collaborators, ever watching for a happy accident that can transform a piece from its mundane origins into a transcendent state of pure expression.

• Seasoned professional, over 15 years experience

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