Lee Johnson, 'Walking the Stour'

Paintings often begin with objects or images close to hand, or recent remembered events - daily essentials that we cannot do without. These images have equal value, but then take on different forms and meaning through the painting process. Scale becomes important, and the translation from the original object or image slowly frees the painting a little, bit by bit. A poorly drawn bottle becomes a thin necked vase; negative shapes suggest other items; a landscape sketch become vectors with emotional heft. Before too long the painting leaves the original impetus behind and becomes something else, in and of itself. It becomes its own thing within the world - no longer an impulse or the artist’s idea - it asserts itself as a new object to contend with.  

The resulting paintings are therefore not portraits or landscapes in the traditional sense, as they are composed and defined in the painting, are drawn through the painting. This is not an exercise in observational picture making, but a soulful construct of what the subject or environment is on an emotional front, something that is personal, fleeting, but justifiably alive.  

The surfaces are thick with activity, marking the physical building of the picture, and paintings are often left a long time before finishing. This way, all original impetus is buried (though it’s still in there, somewhere), so new drives take the painting further away from the original idea, so the paintings develop their own life, their own persona.

Lee Johnson was born in Wiltshire and has lived and worked in London since 2000. He received his MA Fine Art from Central Saint Martin’s School of Art in 2001 and has held a successful studio practice ever since. Between 2006 and 2022 he worked in specialist art technician and gallery management roles at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Art Gallery, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Johnson’s works are held in the collections of Soho House; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; University of the Arts, London; and numerous private collections worldwide (including UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, USA, South America, and Australia). 

Johnson was selected for the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in 2010, and the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2023 at Huddersfield Art Gallery, and was the winner of the inaugural Lido Stores Open, Margate in 2021.