What looked like the ballroom to a advertising agency, Patrick Johnstone, Advertising Executive and senior illustrator had thirty paintings on exhibit based on his airbrush technique. This was his first in twenty five years and from his collection of returning to paint from 2005. These were whimsical and rather kitsch campy portraits rendered by a graphic designer whose fantasy was expressed as women behind shaded palm trees, sun bathers or just Latin dancers under a spotlight of a discotheque.
Dancing at JBs, Patrick Johnstone’s airbrushed work, Port of Spain, Trinidad, W. I.
And by all means his airbrush technique caught patrons off guard by what they did not expect to see. Johnstone used stencils to masked his compositions and place shapes which were then dissected or overlapped with a kaleidescope of colour. His lines were clean and his work reminded you of retro graphic illustrations from the 1980s. This exhibition more or less focused on elements related to the Caribbean as leisurely motifs, but also combined geometric shapes that were abstract yet represented streets, docks and cities. Patrick Johnstone studied along side MP Alladin.
AD MAN PAINTS, Patrick Johnstone, Publicis Caribbean, “The Surgery”, Dere Street & Melville Lane, Port of Spain, the exhibition runs till, 21st, November, 2008
