Caroline Johnson
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Caroline Johnson Caroline Johnson exhibits her work throughout the UK. Lancashire born and bred. Caroline's work is graphic and narrative. Her pictures are accurate depictions, yet intimate, inspirational and highly personal. Background Caroline was born during one of the worst winters on record in Preston. Brought up on a post-war housing estate, archived drawings from when Caroline was five show a keen eye for detail such as washing on a line and fluff under her bed. Caroline studied at the Harris Art School in Preston and and finally in London at the central college of art studying under Cecil Collins, Colin Cina and Paul Huxley. In 2007 Caroline was invited to take part in the BBC's 'Rolf on Lowry', a day-long filmed event, working 'en plein air' and alongside Rolf Harris and other artists, producing re-takes of Lowry's painting 'Piccadily Gardens' Inspiration Caroline's paintings, collages and drawings lean towards the urban and the architectural, yet she's equally happy with landscapes, portraits and still lifes. Of her recent cityscapes, she states “LS Lowry said 'When I was young I did not see the beauty of the Manchester streets. I used to go into the country painting landscapes and the like. Then one day I saw it.... suddenly I saw the beauty of the streets and the crowds.' In my landscapes I avoid the immediately attractive; I prefer to draw an interesting face to a handsome one; I avoid painting flowers. I feel that to render beautiful the already accepted face of beauty is insufficient to challenge me as an artist.” To finished artwork “I like to use many different mediums – I appreciate each one for what it can give to me, not for what I can impose: soft expressive, velvety charcoal; the sharp scratchiness of pen and ink, dry paper to hand – the flat uncompromising shapes it gives pleases me. I have recently started working a little more with watercolour, using it with pen and ink enjoying its qualities of the unexpected, its spontaneity, freshness and brightness.”
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