Exploring inescapable truths

You could be forgiven at first glance for mistaking Stephen Johnston's work in Town Hall Arts Centre as a collection of photographs.

The 'Still Impressions' exhibition is the opening gambit of Cavan Arts Festival, and packs suitable punch for last week's festival programme launch to go off with a bang.

Part of that weighty one-two combo is in the exquisite level of detail contained in these works- a set of high quality prints of Stephen's original oil paintings.

Captivating, the pictures from his 'Best Before' series depict natural objects - an apple, flowers, straw - contained in a sturdy looking mason jar without a cap.

“You can still see the hand of the artist in my mark making,” the Antrim man insists. “It just so happens, with my personality, and the way I approach my subject matter, it is quite a refined mark making with small brushes, but you still very much see the hand of the artist.”

The Celt is dubious about the “very much see” part of this statement, you have to really search for the artist's hand. Stephen hastens the process by pointing to one corner of a picture of pansies in a glass jar. “You can see, if you look closely these strokes with a palette knife scraped back into the paint.”

This exhibition is a mini-retrospective. Many original oilworks - significantly larger than these reproductions - are now housed in galleries around the world, or stashed in private collections.

“I understand how limiting prints can be of the originals,” Stephen concedes, “but it is an interesting way to exhibit multiple bodies of work in the same space.

“As an artist I've seen each piece in my studio but I've not seen them together, and talking and building new relationships with the works.”

We return to the 'Best Before' series - his most recent body of work - to examine how it developed. It began with Stephen paying homage to one of his surrealist heroes René Magritte. He varied the Belgian's 'Apple in Room' - an out-sized Granny Smith completely filling a bedroom - for his own 'Apple in a Jar'. This and a few others are painted in daylight, then the subjects are painted lit up in a dark space.

“I almost wanted to explore the light on the jar in a completely dark background because the reflection began to sing when I enveloped it in an 'old master' still-life setting, so that's where the nocturnal has come from.

“I wanted more story in my reflection,” he asserts encouraging a very, very close look at a sliver of light bouncing off the jar's glass rounded shoulder. “In some of the artworks you can see out of my studio window - you can see the blinds, you can see the lamppost,” he says as we move a few images along.

“You can see where I moved house and moved studio and got different reflections based on the painting - this is one of the first ones - 'Flowers in a Jar no. 5' - when I moved two years ago to Maghaberry.

“It's [the reflection] is on a different side of the jar, but also there's no lamppost and the next door neighbours' [house] and the walls. I began to explore the reflection as the descriptor or personality of an individual perhaps, and more as portraiture, which is fascinating to me - that's still very early doors in this work that I want to explore and hone in on.”

The Celt admires Stephen's willingness to discuss his work so openly, rather than leave it to the unguided viewer to respond. “People will always come in and respond to it regardless of whether they hear my ideas or not, or if they know the narrative or not,” he says. “Is that relevant to their enjoyment of the work? In some ways I don't think so. Because there is such an eclectic mix of works here I feel like I should explain how that came about and how one body of work led to another.”

This writer interprets the works as the grim commodification of nature, the images displaying the allure of polished advertising. However, the contents will soon swiftly decompose.

Stephen offers his own insight: “The still life aspect is about life and death. The 'Old Masters' presented still life in luxury with lobsters and finest silverware of the day. It was always beautiful to me that the lobster is long gone. The silverware of the day has been stolen or eroded or is nowhere.”

He senses his Christian faith has informed, particularly the nocturnal works in the 'Best Before' series. “We are but flowers or grass in the fields, here today but gone tomorrow. The jar very much symbolises that inescapable truth that we're born, we live, we die. We can't get out of it.

“The flowers in some way are us - each individual person, the reflection the personality, their environment the rooms they inhabit. The flowers are beautiful but ultimately trapped in the same way as life is beautiful but there's truths that we can't escape.”

'Still Impressions' by Stephen Johnston runs at the Townhall Arts Centre Gallery until May 22. Open 10am-4pm Tuesday to Friday; 11am-4pm Saturday.