Acrylic on 24" X 16" paper. 2018 (c) James F Johnston.
2018 - Fiskar’s self-healing cutting mat, paper, ink, Elmer’s glue stick, card stock and Xacto knife.
after a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, in A season in hell
An 18th c. British ballad best known in its Appalachian version. This meeting of the doomed young woman and her lover, I set in a derelict factory. A couple of months later, an actual murder was committed here, and the building was demolished.
2014. Oil on canvas (34x38). Private collection. An interpretation of Gillian Welch’s contemporary ballad, in which a woman slays her attacker.
Newspaper illustration depicting the escape of John Turner from the second floor of the King's Arms after he discovered the second murders December 1811
Illustratief Design / Artwork voor het project Fyske Cash, 2011. Ontwerp voor dubbel LP.
2017. Photograph taken on the French-Swiss border by a winter evening. I saw in this row of tree a physical and atmospheric border between 2 countries. An evocation of night travelers, borrowing this black door, the crossing point of the fugitives …
The Murder Ballad is a multi media project in which artists contribute work which is related to or inspired by "Murder Ballads". Painter, poets, photographers, writers, cartoonists and many more are invited to contribute their art. The contributions can be entirely new work, created solely for this project, or existing art works which correspond with the topic of Murder Ballads.
The end result will be an art book about Murder Ballads which will be printed late 2018, early 2019. Rotterdam-based noir band The Bullfight will be making a soundtrack with murder ballads to go with the art. Contributions will be gathered at a new website (launching in february 2018) and on social media. All artists will be promoted through these mediums. Hopefully an art exhibition will go with the project, in which contributions will be part of an art show around the subject.
The purpose of the book is to produce a beautiful art book and to promote all participating artists. Contributions will be without payment and purely be based on creating a combined art work. Paying artists to contribute won't be realistic due to the sheer size of the project (the aim is to get over 100 artists to contribute).