Neon Shade

Artist: Morgan Johnson

Format: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 16" × 20"

Description:

The idea of a beach is perfect. The reality of a beach in summer is Neon Shade. Morgan Johnson fills every inch of this 16×20" canvas with beach umbrellas — dozens of them, striped and spotted and solid, in every combination of yellow, orange, teal, pink, red, and green imaginable — packed so densely that the sand beneath them has nearly disappeared and the people between them are reduced to glimpses of limb and shadow. The color is relentless in the best and most deliberate sense: it delivers exactly the sensory promise of a summer afternoon and then keeps delivering it past the point of pleasure into something closer to overwhelm. From the Mind's Eye Series — Johnson's investigation into the gap between the imagined and the real — he notes this is his first painting using black light oils, and frames the thesis plainly: "elements of comfort can be too popular, and thus can be ruined." The beach hasn't changed. There are simply too many people who needed it at the same time. The shade you came for is someone else's shade now.

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