Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation Presents
John Linthurst Opening Reception
November 21, 2019 @ 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Second Exhibition @ Blade 1936
John Linthurst is a former Los Angeles resident who now resides in Oceanside. He has participated in numerous regional shows and has exhibited solo in notable venues throughout the region for many years. He graduated from the Photo Arts program of Pasadena City College, and went on to hone skills at CS Fullerton, taking odd assignments and learning much along the way.
The greater part of John’s life has been dedicated to various entrepreneurial pursuits and he has had a successful career in business and agriculture. Photography was one of his early avenues of expression and he completed the program at Pasadena City College – and then several additional sections at Cal State Fullerton where he eventually graduated with a degree in English (AMST). In his years in Pasadena he was fortunate to be called into projects by several of his photography friends attending nearby Art Center College of Design and learned greatly from the collaborations. At his creative zenith he was a rock and roll band photographer, with Van Halen and Joey Chamber , and then did a year stint as a roller derby photographer. (L.A. T-Birds} …. quite the adventure!
‘Coast Loco’ is beach specific series derived from seemingly mundane trips to the sand and collecting unremarkable pictures in volume. They consist primarily of multiple layered images taken from the same day’s excursion, and then reordered into a new reality – something the artist may find fitting – but not necessarily accurate. Some are handpainted with oils. The ploy becomes compositing interesting parts into a new whole, creating a beach culture fueled with madness and mass. That residual is what I am after; absurdity we can both laugh with, and at ourselves. These extremes can jockey from a quiet solitude, as nature can provide, to a testimonial of the human bio mass that can annoy to absurd proportion.
Essentially the ‘Oceanside Ally’ series was built around rain events downtown during the wet winter of 2019. In a sense, there is a majestic silence to each alley, a personality of sorts, weighted by history and a survivor’s wherewithal. Wiser they are, and if one is to draw art from them, you do it on their terms. The flush of a winter storm, and the residuals left over in puddles and mirrors, is the equivalent of an alley in full bloom. At least in this artist’s opinion.
John now prefers a contrarian application of photo technique; the more he can disrupt a ‘time and space document’, the better chance for defining a new reality from it … a manufactured reality. His photos consists of dozens of inserts, layers, text, pencil, paper, paint, and once even insects!
“I can’t remember the last time I used a photograph as a whole. I produce them, but tend to desecrate them with chaos or madness right away. Absurdity conveys better sometimes.”
CA ArtNews: http://www.bobcoletti.com/CAArtNews/caartnewsNov2019.php
