A Personal Few Words
This is the last page. For me writing it, it is. I left it to last. In many ways the hardest thing to write about is that which I know best - myself. The pages of this web site are very revealing here and there. I meant for this to be very personal. After all, that is what painting is all about - being personal, having passions, and then sharing that, hopefully in some kind of poetic manner. That can be a very frightening process, for when I open my heart and soul and give it to strangers I have no control over their reactions. All I can promise is that my intentions are good and I hope to receive good in return.


The Artist's Intent
I am an artist who is in many ways out of time and place. I am difficult to classify. I probably share more in common with Lautrec than with anyone else, Like him I am neither traditional nor contemporary, but share passions equally in both directions. I use realism to simply and unpretentiously be an eye in a way that every old master would have understood, and yet I embrace the computer and love to explore this exciting new way that the artist can make art and interact with an audience.

 In the end art is about communicating, and the online universe is not only a marvelous creative tool, it enables the first truly democratic cultural revolution that puts the artist in immediate connection with the world.

Not that I am pretending that this is avant garde. I tend to reject many currently expressed 'contemporary' ideas of what it means to be revolutionary or avant garde. There are some who seem not to appreciate that it is only generations that follow us who will decide for their own reasons what was actually adventurous now. The future makes it's own heroes. So I decline to follow every latest contemporary artists fashion or buzz words. All that I do, instead, is follow my own heart and have the courage to be true to those things that are meaningful to me.

The most meaningful thing to me is painting and making artwork. Sure I have my contradictions, who doesn't? But the uncomplicated truth is I am an artist. I make pictures. I am presenting to you a portrait of a wonderful human being. He happens to make incredible music. It means something to me. I hope it does for you too. That is all.

The portrait and it's meanings.

See more work by TonyJohansen.com

Photograph:
Tony Johansen at the easel in 2005. Photo by TonyJohansen.com