Eleanor Johnson

She is interested in what happens when the mind feels full or overwhelmed, when thoughts overlap, speed up or begin to slip. These states of mental instability sit close to how she thinks about making images. She often recalls the moments before sleep, when images drift or shift, because they echo that same looseness. These ideas inform the way she begins a painting. She is drawn to instability and fullness in both thought and image. Baroque painting, particularly the work of Rubens, is central to her practice for this reason. She is interested in the intensity of his compositions and the way forms press against the edges of the canvas, almost overflowing their own space. That sense of excess mirrors the feeling of an overloaded mind and connects to the way her own compositions often press outward or feel close to spilling over.

Her process involves working in layers, allowing each to dry before returning to it, often moving between several paintings at once. She mixes her oil paint with a generous amount of linseed oil so that the surface remains fluid. She is drawn to the liquidity and viscosity of oil paint, which reminds her of the inner workings of the body – fluids such as saliva, blood or sweat – and the way these textures can echo the surface of skin as they dry. The paint slides, pools or thins, causing forms to dissolve and reappear. She adds paint, rubs it back, glazes over areas and removes sections so that earlier versions of the image remain visible, almost like echoes of previous stages. There is something inherently hypnagogic about this process, in which forms drift in and out or unexpectedly re-emerge, recalling the shifting imagery experienced before sleep. She works close to the canvas and rarely steps back, surrendering a degree of control and allowing the painting to develop on its own terms. Gaps, partially formed figures and traces of earlier layers often determine what happens next.