George Johnston

George Johnston is a contemporary artist originally from Glasgow, Scotland. In the "Peloton Abstract" project, carried out over a period of time ranging from September 2022 to May 2023, George has combined two of his great passions: painting and sport, creating canvases that depict the different moments of the cycling race. The decision to celebrate cycling as a moment of social inclusion and collective celebration is also partly linked to an important sporting event to be held in Glasgow from 5 to 13 August 2023: the UCI Road World Championships. The paintings in the "Peloton Abstract" series examine the different stages of the cycling race separately, presenting them both individually, as photographic fragments of incredible immediacy, and as a whole, a sequence of interconnected images, a real figurative narration. The bodies of the cyclists, the surrounding landscape, the road they travel along, dissolve into abstract shapes, into bright and lively color spots. George abandons drawing, the rigid cage of perspective and pre-set compositions, favoring the free combination of colors, spread in large backgrounds; by eliminating the superficial details, he completes the process of abstraction and simplification of the subject, giving maximum prominence to the immediacy of the scene. In "Breakaway" two cyclists seen from behind are represented, detached from the group after a sprint. The figures are placed in an urban landscape just outlined by free and fast brushstrokes, with a horizontal and vertical trend. The abstraction of the subject through the process of simplification and fragmentation is even more evident in "Pelotón" and "Climb". No element of the environment is any longer recognizable. The cyclists' bodies merge into a chaos of shapes and colors, which communicates the speed and energy of the moment. Completely different from the previous artworks is "Chase". The fragmentation disappears, however the simplification of the subject and the scene remains, divided into overlapping horizontal bands of different thicknesses. In "Cabeza de Carrera" the fragmentation of the figures and the use of splashes of color return. In the foreground are the three leading cyclists, slightly spaced from each other, whose figures are built with small spots of bright color; behind them the other cyclists, an indistinct mass of colors bounded by the green of the vegetation. Looking at these canvases, one perceives the rhythm, energy, speed, excitement, chaos and stress that characterizes a single fraction of a second of a bicycle race.