Interview with Cheryl about Painting Process

When and How do you start to create?

Art is my passion. I spend half my time closely observing the natural world. The other half I spend in the studio, attempting to translate this experience into two-dimensional form. I am always drawn to the minutiae detail. My desire is to paint exposing the evolution of form and work to not fill the canvas with detail but, to let the space speak. I must say that is the most difficult as I so enjoy the layers and process of painting. Knowing when to stop and not add more is my desire. I want to paint Intimate Immensity, fragility, color and light that speak to you." Painting is really physical and takes a lot of energy. I love to create Modern Abstracts. Starting is with a basic idea or color scheme. I pick colors that harmonize. I think about sense of color and composition and about each layer I create. Often a painting will have a depth of 20-30 layers. Creating light is the most important aspect. Illumination and radiance are achieved through the deep layering of oils, alkyds, translucent pigments and varnishes or resins. The tools range from pallet knives to brushes, to scrapers or to cloth and simple rags to remove and scumble colors. Each painting evolves and may take weeks or months to complete. Painting is intimate. I feel an extraordinary commitment to each painting, a dynamic power that moves out into the world. To achieve this I first empty myself of all internal chatter and begin in silence. Painting is essential to me.

Do you went to an art school or self-taught?

Masters. Corporate World. Imagineer. Self Taught.

Do you create as a professional or for your own?

I paint professionally and sell online and in galleries and also complete corporate commissions and private commissions.

How do you learn and work your skill?

Less is more - Cheryl maintains a preference for stillness, but is drawn to movement. Johnson's works with their sheer density of layers endlessly receding are an almost archaeological revealing of the history of their painstaking progression from blank canvas to luminous object.

What do you like in this art, your motivation?

Cheryl Johnson's work is characterised by subtle handling of the medium. Imagery appears to be reduced to essentials and allows mind spaces to be opened up. The observer is drawn in, visually challenged, perception is sharpened, without the paintings giving up all their secrets. A distinctive, moving aesthetic that conveys extreme emotions through vivid and often dissonant colors.

What do you want to express or arouse in those who watch your work?

Moving from people to places to feelings; Cheryl became interested in the space surrounding the figure and moved aggressively to abstract seascapes and landscapes and then to abstract expressionism. “I primarily now, choose to create abstract non-objective paintings because I find the creative process alluring, addictive and satisfying. I begin with a single mark or line on a blank surface. Next, I create an area of color that provides a starting point for an intuitive exploration of the visual language found in abstraction” "My goal as an artist is to create powerful yet sensitive images that invite the viewer to experience an emotion of something new... yet familiar. Painting, to me, is a dance of the brush. With each mark and stroke, it is like music notes on my canvas. “ Cheryl's drive is to pull back the color and noise of life, making quiet the clanging and clutter and many bombarding images and clear the tangles of overlapping branches and discordant feelings to reveal a moment of space that creates a world of color and harmony. Her works are evident of her struggle to find that inner place of peace we all search for. “I hopefully create paintings that will move and inspire. I believe paintings evolve into objects of desire and there is a magical moment you fall in love with them. It is your emotion, taste and the magic of creation, beauty of materials and the evolving process that create a seductive atmosphere, reflecting your individual personality.

What are your favourite subject(s)?

Life

How do you prepare a creation or project work?

Pray. Breathe. Dream. If I am painting in oil and I have a concept planned out I often begin by putting a wash of ochre or alizarin crimson on the canvas. Or at other times I simply take a pencil or piece of charcoal and make a mark to take away the fear or affect of a blank canvas. The marks will give me direction.

What are your most representative creations, and why?

I paint continually. It is my passion. cheryljohnson.co

What are you trying to share via your art?

Style and Themes Cheryl Johnson is an abstract expressionist painter. Her paintings are expansive; preferring to paint large. She is in love with color and line. She is known for the compositional rhythms, bold coloration, and sweeping gestural brushstrokes. Throughout her life, she has never ceased to deepen and refine her relationship to and facility with the various mediums she explores. Her oeuvre can be broken down into a multitude of periods; shifts in her work typically coincide with a shift in her surrounding landscape, personal relationships, or some major life event. "I am able to say things with color, texture, and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I have no words for." She also is comfortable with realism and paints the beauty of people but explores the emotion of abstract. Landscape and seascape influence her subject matter. Her primary medium is oil paint on canvas. She paints on paper, linen and on unprimed canvas or white ground with gestural, autonomous brushwork. Her paintings are highly expressive and emotional.

Who are artists that fascinate or give you inspiration?

Joan Mitchell

What Curators and Critics say about Cheryls Style

TECHNIQUE AND STYLE Cheryl is a “painter’s painter” who embraces a style that is uniquely her own. Inspiring! Her works are elegantly composed and delicately balanced. Her technique is direct.Her work has a mesmerizing quality. Her paintings hover on the borderline between realism and abstraction without ever settling firmly in either camp. Cheryl's abstract paintings are emotional on many levels and not only evoke impressions of people and places inspired by her travels, but also have a sculptural and two-dimensional feeling as she enjoys working with texture. Her painting is characterized by energetic drawing and dramatic contrasts of light and dark. She passionately creates richly layered canvases filled with calligraphic marks and animated by an unequaled material quality of color. Cheryl’s technique of building layers or transparent washes allows the influx of emotion and the history of ideas to overtly inform her final choice of imagery. Temporality, choice, and an insistent dialogue between reason and emotion are frequent themes in her work, along with a consistent reference to land and sea with a varied use of imagery—often involving a juxtaposition of figurative studies and ethereally imagined forms. Cheryl loves light—and an abandoned visceral use of color.