Ehj3
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ehjthree.bsky.social
Ehj3
@ehjthree.bsky.social
7 followers 9 following 55 posts
Unsuccessful artist, cynical skeptic, parsimonous anhedonic
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ehjthree.bsky.social
“Let them eat this.” You Know Who mocks the peasantry. Indifferent to the risk or enjoying it? ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A cruel capitalist and corrupt politician in one is hiding in a baggy suit. You know who he is by his attributes: the yellow mop of hair. the blue of the suit and the tie overlong and bright red. He is in his limo surrounded by money bags amidst a crowd of his excited adherents (red-hatted and wide-eyed, grinning and praying) pressing the one-way glass for a look at their living god.
December 23, 2025 at 10:24 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
CHESTNUTS ROASTED. No holiday cheer here, just a little sincere irony to counter the fake sincerity of the season and the depressing reality of the times. ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Anonymous immigration and customs enforcers (ICE) with unconvincing reindeer antlers power a gilded sleigh controlled by a large headless eminence grise who holds the reins behind a tiny sleeping you-know-who wearing a Santa hat. Tiny you-know-who being held up by gray-suited enablers so he can put a MAGA cap on top of the X-mas tree otherwise decorated with dollar sign ornaments. A propagandist strains to help; an indifferent bystander watches from a distance.
December 20, 2025 at 10:09 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
REBEL WITHOUT CLAWS wanders and ponders unnoticed among the normies both at the grocery and online. ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A three part image. Top: L'arteest is hunched over his ancient drafting table about to draw something with a dip pen. Middle: he's sweeping his efforts into a bucket. Bottom: he’s dumping his collected works into a black hole that is social media. There are no scribbles on the sheets of paper shown. This image is a drawing of drawing, not a drawing of drawings, not a picture in a picture in a picture.
December 19, 2025 at 12:12 AM
ehjthree.bsky.social
A FOUR KING MESS, the apocalypse or Saturnalia? Threat of end times or promise of spring? ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
On the left we have “War” on a red horse, a business-as-usual guy instead of a warrior because war is now created for weapons rather than weapons being created for war. Second from right is a skeletal “Famine” riding a black horse, it is not just representing the starving victim, but the human, yet inhumane, cause of most “natural” disasters these days. Far right is “Death” riding a pale (transparent as best I can draw) horse; she, dressed like a trophy wife in mourning, carries an IV bag as well as a scythe. And finally—center stage, of course—is the current Lord of Misrule astride a white horse. He’s believed by some to be a god-like conqueror “...called Faithful and True,” (Revelation 19:11) but to many others he's pestilence, greedy, selfish and cruel in white KKK sheets. Here, now it doesn’t matter, War and Famine hold the “reigns”
December 14, 2025 at 11:35 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
We are MORE ROBOTIC THAN ROBOTS and fast approaching our use-by date when our robot masters will declare us more trouble than worth. ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A pair of similar dystopian steampunk assembly line scenes, one, the first phase of the singularity, where humans insert human brains into robot heads, and the other, a later phase, where robots don't need human brains any more, and they see humans with brains as competition for limited resources. So the robots remove then discard human brains rendering humans merely useless, more robotic than robots. Aso In the first one a billionaire watches the process, in the second he has been rendered useless too.
December 13, 2025 at 12:48 AM
ehjthree.bsky.social
FOURTH ESTATE OR FIFTH COLUMN?
Does the media abide by the Fairness Doctrine or its near opposite, the Friedman one? —ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
The drawing has two parts. Both images have the same composition, but the lower one is flipped left to right. Both images have a poster being shown to an audience of hands by a group of grinning media executives. Both images only show the hand gesture of their audiences. The top one’s poster is of you know who in a superhero costume complete with peace medal ear bandage and IV line. The audience's gestures are praying, grasping and straight-arm saluting. The bottom’s post turns you know who around, we see his satan-like tail and horns as well as a full adult diaper. The audience's hands still pray too but, subbing for the salute and grasp, they flash a peace sign and a power to the people fist. There is a banner across the middle of the drawing. it says “fare and balanced” it's a pun on the old Fox News slogan. Fare, not fair, meaning everything institutional—three branches, four estates and five columns—has a fare, a price, these days.
December 9, 2025 at 2:11 AM
ehjthree.bsky.social
HI HO, HIGH, LOW, OFF TO WORK THEY GO
So sing creator-entrepreneurs as they become marketers and propagandists where they greedily count their winnings.
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
We see a painting on an easel that shows humans in business uniforms walking up the career path step by step. One of the suits is standing still, it has no human inside anymore. A hatch stands open on the suit's back. A rope ladder extends from the opening. There is also a ladder, a small one, more the scale of the scene inside the painting than outside it leaning against the easel. The creator-entrepreneur is still hiding in the suit, but seems to be in a quandary. Representing all creator-entrepreneurs who must ask: Do I use these ladders to try to escape or close the hatch and resume the climb? But, maybe there is no choice available as the skillsets and environment given each choose for them.
December 6, 2025 at 8:16 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
MOBY DON OR OUR WAIL
An allegory of a tragedy where one man’s hubris is played on global stage
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
The image is as one near the end of the chase at the end of Moby Dick, but here, both harpooner and whale are dressed like you-know-who (blue suit, red tie, and mop of yellow hair.) A MAGA redneck and a GOP elephant, you-know-who’s sycophants, row a metaphorical Ahab in for the kill. The harpoon is yet to be thrown.
December 3, 2025 at 12:32 AM
ehjthree.bsky.social
THE USABLE AND THE USELESS
Two drawings attempting to show the difference using an extraterrestrial metaphor
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A solitary (elderly, too: we see his white bead sticking out of his helmet and he's wearing sweats) astronaut floats untethered above a world that has turned its back on him. While he still tries to make contact. A phone in its back pocket buzzes but goes unanswered. The capitalist users are unseen, only implied here. but tethered to them are the used (laborers in assorted business outfits) shown as anonymous astronauts drawn towards where they’ll never go: the world of wealth, the earth as a money bag.
November 29, 2025 at 11:49 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
MENHIRS AND MOMENTOS
The imaginary adventures of a demographically liminal soul
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A dolmen in an idyllic, yet surreal, landscape contemplated by a shabby wanderer who could be an aesthete or a bum. The dolmen is not a romantic jumble of stone age megaliths, it's a group of super-sized characters from late 20th century cartoons: Gadget Hackwrench, “Gift” Smurf and Orko, in a pastiche that’s full of parody and irony—and itself—fair-use situation. There is also a Victorian-appearing, admission-charging turnstile, separating the romantic nostalgic wanderer from the monument.
November 24, 2025 at 11:33 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
HORROR MIRROR TOO. The previous post (17nov25) now shown wide screen with accomplices and “bathroom humor.”
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
The picture in the picture shows Uncle Sam aghast at seeing YKW in the mirror. The framing image shows the rest of the bathroom, or a different one with a double sink and a pressroom podium, the latter only reflected in the mirror. Uncle Sam’s GF, the statue of liberty lady in a green bath robe, with torch and tablet. hair down, just out of the shower, stands behind him. In the mirror, behind you know who, is one of his co-conspirators, a young-ish female press secretary in full regalia: cross, warpaint and colorful plumage ranting at his behest.The outer part is not cross hatched to separate it from my usual style of the inset which loses some detail from being copied half sized, sorry. The new outer part is more like a B. Kliban than the R. Crumb-ishness of the inner. It is also left all-to-humanly sloppy, not that anyone would think these drawings are AI generated.
November 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
HORROR MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO’S THE CRUELEST OF THEM ALL?
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Uncle Sam in his tradition outfit of a blue suit, red tie and flowing hair, reels back aghast at what he sees reflected in his bathroom mirror, not “a home of the brave, land of the free” personified, but their opposite, a cowardly criminal (you know who) with his traditional outfit, a blue suit, red tie and flowing hair.
November 17, 2025 at 9:09 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
BETWEEN CONCEPTION AND CREATION. An alienating reminiscence and uncanny fantasy or vice versa? —ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A vacationer sketches poolside at a resort. His drawing shows an imaginary competitive pool with lanes and starting blocks where a babe on the deck leans over to give a trophy to a dude in the water. It is superimposed on a “real” pool that is more recreational, a kidney-shaped relic of the ‘50s. The lounger dips his pen in his tiki-bar inspired drink. A drawing of a drawing, where the image and the image in the image both do and don't line up. The babe being at the resort and swim meet at the same time is perplexing. The ink-drink combo is also baffling, but in a different way. She is here and there, at the same time; it is then and now in the same place.
November 15, 2025 at 10:20 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
HOW IS ANYONE OK WITH THIS? A weird loner with limited social skills doesn't understand —ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
The drawing is of a whale-shark-like creature with a mostly blue body except for an orange colorizing around its mouth and nares and tiny pink appendages at the ends of of its pectoral fins; a yellow mop-like dorsal fin and a weird red snake-like appendage coming out to its ventral anterior. Its large mouth is agape and in addition to its usual diet of maga krill sucked in by the millions we see two larger prey, Uncle Sam and Ms. Liberty.
November 11, 2025 at 9:23 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
EARLY MAN LATE AGAIN. Pre- and post-modern scenes coexist as a drawing in a drawing “Between the idea and the reality.” —ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
An ancient cave entrance looking out over a modern cityscape in the distance where “hollow men…stuffed men”—and women—as “violent souls” live “in the twilight kingdom.” Early Man, with a shaggy beard and crude hide shorts sits on its ledge. His branch and sinew ladder, lies in the foreground; it is useful to reach otherwise unreachable parts of the cave where we see, not creatures to eat or to fear as you'd expect of stone age rock art, but his drawings of modern men and women chasing love, money and each other. The tool of his trade, a pen the size of a spear, lurks serpent-like in the shadows.
November 10, 2025 at 9:23 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
MAN OVERBOARD! A double entendre: an artist has been tossed “overboard” by capitalists who are going “overboard" with their yacht. —ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
A fancy yacht with a 100 dollar bill as a sail helmed by jet-setters, a fat cat in a blue blazer and a hot chick in a green bikini, cruises away from a jetsamed artist. We see only his or her hands as they draw a crude desert island on a sketchpad doubling as life preserver.
November 7, 2025 at 10:08 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
PADDED SELLS. A look at the art game gone wrong when hallucinations don't make dollars or sense — ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Top image is of a padded cell where a strait-jacketed patient spouts nonsense in the form of a Kandinsky-like abstraction while an orderly and a doctor stand helplessly by. Same composition below but it is an art gallery where the patient is now an artist, with his nonsense framed and hung, and the doctor and orderly have become bemused connoisseurs.
November 6, 2025 at 12:33 AM
ehjthree.bsky.social
SNAKE CHARMER. No, You-know-who is more a charmed snake. He is a puppet that enables the snake to speak our language, giving us permission to be greedy and cruel. —ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Snake-man is an act on a bright lit stage in Small Town USA. You-Know-Who with his blue suit, red tie and mop of yellow hair “weaves” back and forth hypnotizing the locals who've suspended their disbelief to appreciate his show, that the threats to our survival are real, but we see that it's all fake; it's just a puppet on a tube filled with hot air. Other members of this circus, the jugglers, contortionists, magicians and clowns, are mostly backstage, somewhat hidden from the audience. They run the show and take as much of what he brings in as they can. It's his show in name only.
November 3, 2025 at 1:10 AM
ehjthree.bsky.social
MAGA NUI. History repeats itself, bigly. The cause could be ecocide, opportunism or blind obedience, but the effect is anybody's guess. ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Two teams, maga believers, christo-nationalists, on one side and opportunistic capitalists on the other had been pulling a monolithic statue—a modern moai—of you-know-who side to side to “walk” it to the place where they wanted it to be. But they’ve lost control! The ropes fly free. They chase after it, as it rocks clumsily on its own towards the sea.
October 30, 2025 at 7:58 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
LOVE MATCH. A pair of mythical adversaries, Odysseus and a siren, face off. Each imagining victory celebrations. ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
The Greek hero-king Odysseus steps on to the isle of sirens to face one of the bird woman chymeras. Thought balloons indicate what each would like from their fated encounter. He imagines eating a large drumstick worthy of his kingly status and she dreams of a human—the best would be Greek—skull to drink from.
October 27, 2025 at 9:34 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
MOTHER NATURE AND FATHER CRIME. Pre-lapsarian and post-apocalyptic scenes, before culture and after. See ehjohnson3.wordpress.com for more
Top: In a bountiful pre-lapsarian setting Mother Nature swings her child, a naive human, on a swing hung on a tree that could be the one of the knowledge of good and evil. Both seem fearful. Bottom: same locale but now post-apocalyptic. The swing still swings but is empty. The tree is bare. In the background is a politicized image borrowed from Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” where several humans follow death personified off stage. Here they wear red maga caps and death has a long red tie, blue suit and mop of yellow hair. A bit of painter's gear sits in the lower right; it’s cropped so we can't see if the naive human from the top panel is working there. If not, he or she could be one of the followers in the background.
October 23, 2025 at 6:48 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
VALUE/EFFORT MATRIX. A humanized version of that capitalist trick theorized unconsciously but applied socially. See ehjohnson3.wordpress.com for more
1)’50s baby hollers ineffectively in darkness while parents and their friends party in the next room framed by the door. 2) Same scene 2 decades later: 20-something gets his fifth beer from the fridge in an otherwise dark kitchen while his hippy/hipster friends hook up in the next room. 3) A middle aged workaholic sits alone in a ‘90s cubicle office as coworkers network behind him under the glaring eye of the one of them who's been promoted. 4) old guy (disabled, divorced, downsized, whatever) in his armchair watches a rerun of of a 50s or 70s or even a 90s sitcom
October 19, 2025 at 7:06 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
IMAGINARY REUNION
Three caricatures wait for a fourth at the “Cafe Bemuse” not in search of an author nor he them
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Three people sitting in an otherwise empty cafe. They are all stereotypes, A business man is angry at being made to wait. He stares at his expensive watch. The tightly wound femme fatale plots her next move: attaching herself to the businessman. And the bohemian artiste scribbles on the table to pass the time somewhat productively. Lurking outside, through a gap in the curtains, is another person, an unremarkable face, just watching the waiters.
October 15, 2025 at 10:21 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
ASCENDING OR DESCENDING
Start with some imagery from M. C. Escher, add some Fritz Lang and Karl Marx. Now imagine all that in your neighborhood
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
Let's begin with some Penrose steps, an impossible object that was made famous by M. C. Escher's 1960 lithograph “Ascending and Descending.” substitute a single 21st century Marxian—though not Marxist—lumpen prole for the cloister of monks Escher crayoned. Add some bourgeoisie based on cartoon characters Daddy Warbucks and Natasha Fatale. Set all that in the imagined “guts” of Lang's underground Temple of Moloch from his 1927 film “Metropolis” with a modernized maschinenmensch enticing us into her corner
October 10, 2025 at 5:09 PM
ehjthree.bsky.social
This is inspired by the Magritte painting “La Clairvoyance," but the painter here simply, foolishly sees one scene and paints another. It is not a metaphor.
—ehjohnson3.wordpress.com
a painter paints a butterfly flying over a woman's hand over some daylilies in the wild. his model is a cut rose and a butterfly trapped under an inverted glass. in the Magritte original the painting was of a bird and the model an egg
October 6, 2025 at 8:09 PM