Art Opening multi media artist Eric Johnson

These paintings were created in 2008 & 2009 onstage during a Neil Young world tour.While Neil played an acoustic set and an electric set, Eric stood on the upstage edge next to the drummer painting with acrylic on large canvases.

The paintings were painted in in front of anywhere between 3,000-75,000 people at shows and festivals in the US, Europe, Canada, and Australia, and have lived a life beyond that of most paintings.To say they tell stories is an understatement.

The paintings themselves are quick and rough creations that were inspired by whatever Neil and the band were playing at that moment and some nights multiple paintings were completed, then unceremoniously loaded onto set carts by the road crew and sent on to the next city arriving battered and road worn, then used to decorate the stage.

On great nights paintings were sold after the show, like when Paul McCartney joined Neil and the band at a festival in London, the Hard Rock in London showed up backstage and bought two paintings on the spot and carried them out of the festival still wet with paint.

Live paintings are not everyone’s cup of tea.In fact, some of Neil’s fans were downright honest about their hatred for the work.However, to know Eric is to know he gets as much enjoyment out of insulting reviews as positive reviews (there have been a couple).Eric ascribes to the P.T. Barnum notion that “any press is good press”.The reviews of Eric’s work on an animated short with the late, Kobe Bryant is further proof of that belief.

Below is a snippet of a couple of Eric’s favorite anonymous reviews of these paintings:

At 4/08/2008 05:22:00 AM, Anonymous said...

mr johnson paintings are simply awful

At 4/08/2008 10:30:00 AM, Anonymous said. ..

Agreed. They are about the level of a high school art student. Don't quit your day job Eric!

At 4/08/2008 01:16:00 PM, Anonymous said...

Agreeing with yourself doesn't make you right, dude...

I personally thought they were a nice touch to the concerts, I loved seeing him working up the back while Neil was playing.
And the audience reaction when the paintings were put up before the song started were brilliant.
I would like to buy one for a song I like when they finally go on sale, but I bet they'd be expensive.
I don't think they're awful though, in fact I think they represent what's happening on the stage very well - rugged, rough around the edges, but somehow still deceptively appealing.

If the paintings hadn’talready had long ride around the globe, upon return the US they were stored in Neil’s warehouse where they were the only thing that survived a massive fire, leaving some of them covered in soot and even more suited to Neil Young’s aesthetic.

After a nearly eighteen year journey, a handful of the paintings have finally made it to Olympia, where they are being shown for the first time since they were created onstage.