Anne Johnstone

Artist Statement

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I paint and draw because painting and drawing are the ways in which I engage most joyfully with the world. Implicit in this joy is that I do not have to spend time pretending to be what I am not. I can download my darkest self into my artwork and the artwork still speaks to me. No worries that I have transgressed a fragile boundary and exposed my most needy self. No need to edit my perceptions to protect other people. In fact, the more unedited I am when faced with a blank surface, the greater the possiblities for visual exploration.

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My process is intuitive, relying on the imagination. I rarely draw from life, choosing instead to draw from whatever I am feeling in the moment. Emotional themes occur and reoccur in my work. Color and shape explore feeling and drive composition. I do no preliminary drawings for my work, yet I feel that they have an internal architecture. That architecture might be experienced as a subliminal tension, a kind of self-consciousness of a work's parameters.

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Contemporary influences on my work are Amy Sillman and Brenda Goodman.