Meteor

The two primary strands in Johnstone's artistic life are Romanticism and Surrealism, and the two main aspects of Surreal practice on which he drew were what he called "lift-off technique", which we might term blotting of the paint surface, and automatic drawing, which we encounter here in a new and strikingly innovative form. Using the latter approach, the Surrealist artist attempts to let his conscious mind go vacant so as to allow impulses to arise out of the subconscious which will serve as the forces governing the creative gesture of the hand and brush. It has been used in western art to great effect during much of the twentieth century. In an utterly extraordinary late transfiguration of automatic drawing, Johnstone began to produce surreal, bas-relief sculptures using this approach. With a studio assistant, George Turnbull, a friend from the local building trade, Johnstone changed ink for wet plaster and brushes for brickies' trowels, one in each hand; and in the brief moments between mixing and petrification of the plaster he produced incomparable images such as this one, surreal sculpture: works of art perhaps unique in these isles. Johnstone, with his allusive and far from literal mind, found an area of overlap between the action of the farmer's plough going through the soil and work such as this, where the sculptor's tool created form. With financial assistance from Johnstone's late patron and collector Mrs Hope Montagu-Douglas-Scott, some of the plasters, Meteor amongst them, were framed and displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. They have seldom been seen since.