NinaJohnson

The poison dart paintings have percolated in my mind for a few years, but I never felt right enough to make them. The name derives from a brightly colored frog with poisonous skin that could kill you if you touch it. I’ve explored subtle color and hidden images that feign invisibility over the past seven years. I’ve explored camouflage and studied the coloration methods of an octopus. I’ve been involved with trickery, as with deimatic color that appears to be something it is not, such as fake eyes on butterfly wings; in my case I’ve painted planes shifting and false edges. But aposematic color—vivid color that means what it signifies (danger, touch me = death)—I’ve not too much engaged. So the idea of these bright paintings sat by the wayside, waiting for me to become interested in paintings that can be forthright in their color, and unabashed in lifting sources from the biological world.

A note on frogs: they take exceptionally deep breaths. Scientists have studied how they piston air into their lungs (hoping to learn to help humans who otherwise need ventilators). They also absorb oxygen through their moist skin and thereby breathe with their whole bodies. Frogs live in realms wet and dry, take big leaps, and are sonic, like paint/painting/the painted.

The poison dart has sapphire, gold and lazurite skin. Their toxins attack a predator’s nervous system and the electrical impulses in the heart. Scientists hope to discover a new painkiller with their poison. Many people have felt pain this year. Our society is disease-ridden.

COVID made me acknowledge I could never smell well. Now my olfactory organs work better than ever, I think. Maybe I’m just more aware. Perhaps the poison dart paintings are patches of chromatic awareness, therapeutic venom for facing dragons. 

Nathlie Provosty

20 October 2020