LYNN JOHNSON Biography

Lynn Johnson is an American born contemporary artist. She combines a love for drawing and mark-making with her signature broad brushstrokes to create abstracted florals. Inspired by the work of the great abstract expressionist artists — Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Fairfield Porter, David Park — she is driven to keep moving forward, ever experimenting with new approaches to her work and practice, and building upon a style uniquely her own.

Working predominately in oils, Lynn’s artistic process begins with making marks, lines, and adding washes of color. There are no mistakes or plans; it’s free and all about movement and gestures - messy, spontaneous, impulsive. It’s a dialogue of sorts between intuition and practice, one of creating layers, opacity, and transparency. She prefers to keep her palette limited and her work large scale. Her composition reveals itself as she carves out shapes and forms as they appear and recede on the surface. “I am not gentle or delicate in my approach to painting. I slap paint on the surface, pour it, scrape it, push it, and move it around with my fingers.”

Growing up in a family that traveled and moved around a lot, Lynn’s earliest artistic pursuits were with her camera and sketchpad, painting sporadically with gouache and acrylics. She received her BFA from Iowa State University College of Art and began work as a graphic artist. Her career path would be forever altered when she moved from Montana to Georgia in 2000, and soon after began managing an admired art gallery in Atlanta. “I met the most amazing artists, clients, and lovers of all things art who encouraged me to pursue my painting. That was the spark and I’ve been painting professionally since 2010.”

Lynn Johnson is a full-time painter living in suburban Atlanta. Her work has been exhibited in public and private collections throughout the United States and is often described as calming, serene, and feminine.

ON THE WALL: Inside The Artist's Studio
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