Several years ago, artist-photographer Sandee Johnson of Asheville, North Carolina, began costuming and creating characters for her imaginative photo shoots. A natural progression evolved into body painting to complete character transformations. After meeting Scott Fray and Madelyn Greco, she discovered the bodypainting family that stretches around the globe. Even though she and her husband Brian lived in Europe for 20 years, they had no idea about the World Bodypainting Festival nor its competitions all over the map. When she found out that Living Art America also offered competitions and various events in Atlanta and Greensboro in addition to other American projects, she was hooked. But instead of doing much of the painting herself, she chose to photograph the ephemeral art since without documentation, the art of bodypainting is always temporary.
Sandee has shown her artwork in galleries, public spaces and museums globally in many capital cities of the world. Her upcoming exhibition in Moscow revolves around her photographic documentation of festivals that she’s attended. After shooting the models and printing them, she paints and collages their surface, giving the allusion that the figures and faces are leaping out of a color field painting. Backgrounds are obscured so that viewers concentrate on the painting details. This can be done digitally but she prefers the tactile feel and immediacy of a hands-on approach.
Curator Igor Roussanoff selected around thirty pieces for the show at the Theatre Salon, 11, Building 2, Tverskoy Blvd. A slide show of her other photos will be shown simultaneously at the historical mansion, which is one of the satellite properties of the A.A. Bakhrushin Theater Museum. An opening reception will be held July 6th, right after the WBF in Austria and the exhibition extends until the end of August.
