Anna Johnson came late to painting. She’s been a writer for most of her working life, putting visual art onto the page through criticism, commentary and story. While she’s always drawn and made watercolours, writing was where her primary creative focus lay. Six years ago, she took a studio and began to paint large abstract canvasses. The results are extraordinary, writes Susie Burge.
Walking into Anna Johnson’s studio is like passing through a portal into another world: a flight of rickety wooden stairs leads to the top floor of a turn-of-last-century building where Johnson serves tea in ornate vintage china cups, a lapdog appears to have emerged straight from a late Rembrandt oil painting and the artist herself rarely stops talking about art. Johnson has been a storyteller for most of her adult life, translating visual art onto the page through narrative, criticism and commentary. She’s written on a diverse range of artists, from Australians Ann Thomson and Simryn Gill to the American painter Sean Scully. She has a way with words. And now it appears Johnson has a way with paint too. Around us, in vivid contrast to the dilapidated charm of the building, hang large abstract canvasses, all painted within the last few years. These astonishing paintings are sophisticated in their referential quality, yet at the same time the work feels fresh and raw and genuinely original, and the colours are extraordinary.
