Artist Statement
“At any time, I could head to the middle of the forest, strip off my clothes, and dive into a river to wash off the sins of contemporary society in the primordial essence of nature. Knowing I have this freedom is how I get through my day.”
Biography
Johnny Defeo’s work belongs to the concept of souvenir, attempting to capture the experiences he has in the natural world, where he feels free and most at home. His paintings and rugs focus on the physical margins between unmitigated wilderness and human construction in an attempt to represent the psychological division between egocentric and holistic thought. He makes work with the earnest goal of minimizing the perceived divide between the natural world and the manmade and illuminating the connections between beauty both quintessential and manufactured.
Johnny’s interest in rugs as a material with which to create iterations of his paintings is informed by from his interest in interior design, luxury goods, and traditional forms of craft, which he finds to be more experiential and approachable than traditional fine arts practices.
In Rivers, a collection of self portraits floating nude in bodies of water all over the world serve as souvenirs of a freeing and reenergizing experience- a moment of submersion into the life-giving force of flowing water. These self portraits serve as the basis for his paintings and rugs, merging his explorations of the sublime with the process of making functional works that address the barriers between nature and culture, inside and outside.
Johnny lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He earned his MFA in painting from CU Boulder in 2017. During his time at CU he exhibited in national juried MFA exhibitions in New York and Chicago, and organized exhibitions and collaborative curatorial projects with artists and curators in Boulder and Denver. In 2018, he will be exhibiting in several group shows, as well as two solo shows, and will attend the Jentel artist residency in Wyoming.