Artist Statement (Mid 2025)
I recently learned that due to a binocular vision condition, I don’t naturally perceive the world in three dimensions—I see more in 2D, in layered planes. It’s something I’d intuitively worked around, learning to draw and paint through close observation of light, tone, and contour. But the discovery helped me understand a deeper current in my work: a persistent interest in distorted perception—where the world appears fragmented, layered, or slightly unreal. That altered way of seeing resonates, for me, with the hypnagogic state, which has long been a central influence in my work. In that threshold between waking and sleep, reality feels both vivid and unstable—forms waver, dissolve, or recombine in unfamiliar ways. Both of these ways of seeing—neurological and psychological—reflect how perception is never fixed, and how each person experiences the world through a different, shifting lens. My paintings try to hold something of that dreamlike ambiguity: the sense of an image flickering between coherence and collapse. The flatness of space in many of my compositions—where figures sit on a single plane—has become something I now recognise as part of how I see. It’s not only a style, but a deeper instinct—one that also connects to the layered, frontal quality of medieval tapestries, which I’ve always loved.
The nude body appears regularly in my work—often sourced from erotic imagery, though the focus isn’t solely on desire. I’m interested in skin as a charged surface: exposed, sometimes overwhelming, and culturally loaded. Some scenes are overt, others more ambiguous, revealing themselves slowly over time. I’m particularly drawn to the fleshy, almost meaty quality of skin—how it can seduce and repel in the same moment. I’m interested in how beauty and disgust coexist or oscillate within an image, sometimes tipping into the grotesque. It’s a tension I’ve always found compelling in Rubens—how his depictions of flesh and excess walk the line between pleasure and horror. My own work explores that same edge.
Materially, I shift between thin glazes and thick, oil-rich passages—building up colour and depth gradually in some areas, and applying viscous paint directly to the canvas in others. These two contrasting approaches allow me to move between subtlety and excess within a single composition. I often return to pentimento—the visible trace of a previous mark—as a kind of visual echo that gently animates the figures. I’ve also recently been working with diptychs, using the break between canvasses to introduce a visual rupture or interruption. It’s a formal device that mirrors the thematic fragmentation running through the work—first explored through the body, and now extended to surface and structure.
Mythology, symbolism, and narrative—especially myths of transformation—are central to my process. They offer a framework that guides the shape and themes of a painting. Often, a work begins with a story, character, or image that acts as a springboard: a moment of metamorphosis, an archetype, or even an atmosphere that resonates with me. I’m particularly drawn to myths that blur boundaries—between human and animal, body and spirit, violence and tenderness. I’ve been inspired by figures like Dionysus, Circe, Medusa, Selene, Pygmalion, Icarus, and folkloric characters such as the Cailleach and selkies.
Colour is another driving force for me. I begin with small colour studies that often evolve into the backgrounds of larger paintings, setting the tone and palette early on. I’ve long looked to Old Master palettes for inspiration, but recently I’ve become increasingly drawn to the colours of gardens and foliage too—working from memory or observation, sometimes painting en plein air. This shift has changed both my palette and brushwork, which now frequently echoes botanical forms: leaves, stems, petals. Some of these colour passages have become standalone works in their own right.
Historically, I’ve drawn inspiration from Baroque painting—especially Rubens—for his treatment of flesh and compositional excess. But I’m equally influenced by the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and by visual traditions that embrace transformation, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Renaissance frescoes and drawings as well as medieval textiles. Myth and materiality are central to my practice—but so too is perception itself: how paint can reflect distorted realities.
I hold a BA in History of Art from UCL and an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School. I was awarded First Prize in Jackson’s Art Prize (2025) and previously completed a two-month residency at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy in 2019. My work is held in private collections and institutions across the UK, US, Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. I currently live and work in Oxfordshire, UK.
For more regular updates on my studio practice, please see my Instagram: @eleanorjohnsonstudio.