Ted Johnston

Ted Johnston’s art making is in the traditional realm of wood block prints.

Wood block printing is a long established artistic medium that has been fundamental to social exchange and creating historical records in text and image.

Ted’s first encounter with printing was with ‘hot type’ at McMaster University’s student newspaper, “The Silhouette”, then as President of Canadian University Press and, later, as editor of the national student newspaper in the United Kingdom. It was this early experience in journalism which sparked a fascination in the artistry of creating an image in one medium then transferring it to another.

In 1966, he joined Canada’s diplomatic service and was first posted to Washington, D.C., where he had the opportunity to learn printmaking at the Corcoran School of Art. Career and family took precedence until 1998 when he took out his tools to begin cutting and printing again.

With the demands of career behind him, Ted has chosen to pursue making wood block prints of contemporary Ottawa and foreign locales to continue that traditional art form and particularly to raise awareness of structures and scenes that are so familiar as to be almost invisible.

Much of his subject matter has been to create unique artistic representations of buildings or scenes that are integral to the community around them.

In selecting the design to be cut, he looks for distinctive structural features that he feels represent the subject’s character. By isolating key characteristics, the goal is to highlight a structure or scene that may ordinarily be overshadowed by its surroundings or its familiarity to the viewer. At the same time, the viewer is reminded of the social, commercial, historical, spiritual, or political roles played in and by these structures and, often, a personal memory is awakened.

More recently his inspiration has expanded to encompass living creatures, people and animals.

The art of block making demands an inner eye that visualizes the composition, depth and perspective as it will appear in the final work. Working on a reverse image is a unique challenge to creating these pieces and hand-to-eye coordination is an important element in the process.

The first cut is often crucial in determining all that follows and one is constantly aware that little adjustment can be made at the end. Ted finds that monochrome (the use of one colour) is the most satisfying way to capture dominant aspects of the original scene.

Rarely printing in pure black, he creates dark hues by blending colours to enhance the sense of the building’s physical components. Certain effects, such as luminescence, are achieved through the addition of silver or gold. While he appreciates the enhancement of an image through the use of colour, colour, by its very nature, can distract from the structural presence he wishes to capture.

In additional to participating in several group exhibitions and holding solo shows in the National Capital Area, in May 2003, Ted was a guest on CJOH-TV Program “Regional Contact”. More of Ted’s creations can be viewed in The Virtual Gallery of the Foreign Service Community Association at www.fsca-acse.org/ted.htm. For further information, Ted may also be contacted at (613) 748-0346) or via email: erjohnston@ncf.ca.

View examples of Ted Johnston's work

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