Alexander Johnson

Alexander Johnson

Painter

Location : Laughton (England)

My work focusses on stories that I fear are in danger of being forgotten. Sometimes these stories relate back to WW2 and my father’s history as a reconnaissance photographer. Sometimes they are my own recollections and thoughts. I make charcoal drawings that inform the paintings. Which are then slowly built up from a palimpsest of lines. And gradually distilled into something more simple. Until only essential information remains.

This process iresults in a textural quality that unites all the work on canvas. I like the working process to be visible in the finished object. And have a hand-made quality that is an antidote to the shiny screen-images. That surround us in the twenty-first century. I come from a pre-digital age and find that most of what still interests me does too.