Hand paintings 1998-1999

This series of work began in the late summer of 1998 and was finished winter of 1999.

    An extension of personality and emotion, the hand acts out the visual counterpart to conversation. Words spoken mearly designate logical meaning, where as hand movements in connection with vocal tonation ads emotional meaning and a visual focus to conversation. This body of work is born of my interest in how people communicate with one another by using their hands. I believe that when we gesture with our hands, we are creating a visual counterpart to language. We are painting the space around the words as they are being uttered. The movements and shapes the hand creates activates the space between people, creating another language that helps to form meaning to what ever is being spoken. Hands offer people the ability to create visual samples of words- through motion and shape, which are part of our conversational experience.

-©1998 Neil Johnston.