The Voice of Q

About the Work

This painting is about conspiracy theories. Johnson originally made a small drawing of this figure in his sketchbook while watching the news. Nguyen was inspired to make it into a large painting, so it began with the central figure, she then started incorporating her own Vietnamese inspired motifs like the large golden dragon directly behind the figure and the Chinese symbol of happiness. Johnson applied symbols appropriated by conspiracy theorists including a frog meme, a domino, making out Disney to be the enemy. Aliens taking white women. Last Johnson applied a common motif throughout his work, the flowers, with the thought that they would somehow be a redeeming quality for the chaos within the painting. Both Nguyen and Johnson take delight in systems gone dynamically awry, while seeing degeneration as an evolutionary process.

About the Artist

JEREMIAH JOHNSON was raised on a fruit and flower farm in North Central Pennsylvania. He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art of Temple University, and his MFA from Syracuse University. Johnson’s work is included in several collections both regionally and internationally including the State Museum of Pennsylvania, the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke Virginia and the Servais Family Collection in Brussels Belgium. Johnson currently manages a Makerspace at Nicholls State University, and works with his wife in their studio making art about culture, folklore, and survival.

There is a strong metaphorical quality to the combination of materials, images and installations where visual elements blend, then threaten to contradict each other, setting up a matrix that’s rich, personal, tense, restricting, and liberating all at once. This is what attracts me to mixed media. Every technique I use from found imagery, to printing, painting and cut vinyl has its own mark, its own voice, along with a cultural, conceptual and historical context. For me it is the blending and/or contrast of techniques that drives the work and makes it successful or not. My interests are varied and directly influenced by the schizophrenic nature of the internet. I am also inspired by both popular and regional culture, folklore and personal struggle.