SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS
Shen Yun Returns to New Jersey Classical Chinese dance next chapter of Newark’s legacy of revival.
RICHARD TERMINE
‘Henry IV Part I’ at BAM Remember your allies and the promises you’ve made them in your climb to the top.
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C1 April 22–28, 2016
Artist Brendan Johnston’s
Profound Search to Affirm Life
Brendan Johnston in his studio at Grand Central Atelier in Long Island City, Queens, on March 25.
A glimpse into the atelier art movement By Milene Fernandez | Epoch Times Staff
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EW YORK—Brendan Johnston likes to keep his artistic choices open and varied, yet steady. The young artist has calibrated his
internal compass to keep him on course in the artistic tradition of the old masters, and yet he’s perfectly at ease with not knowing yet exactly how he wants to distinguish himself. His confidence rests in the search, in little discoveries, in that stirring process of refinement toward mastery.
Art ought to reflect or deeply relate to life. There has to be some aspect of some moral quotient because you have to try, on some level, to be a good person, and that extends to fine art. Brendan Johnston
“How do you treat contours? Do you create a sense of more movement in the figure by having multiple undecided contours, or do you decide on a finished one?” he asked rhetorically. “In one portrait I might want to do a very tightly rendered profile with a precise line. Maybe it’s the model who inspires that. Or I might want to do one that is more structurally based with a little bit more of a Russian influence, and then I might try to do something in the middle,” Johnston said. He spread a portfolio full of drawings on the floor of his studio space at Grand Central Atelier, where he teaches and works as an artist in residence. Each drawing revealed his exquisite skill. He had drawn Michelangelo sculptures that he luckily had permission to spend time with for weeks in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
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