Eva Ryn Johannissen |
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Following
in the tradition of the abstract expressionist artists of the 20th
century I am interested in states of mind, rather than in describing
particular external events or what the physical world looks like.
Instead I use emotive colour, abstract shapes and texture to create
visual metaphors for contemporary life. I like to dwell on the point where our perception is at its most sensitive, i.e. just where our mind starts perceiving a shape as something that might possibly exist in the physical world. Whereas most of my recent paintings are essentially abstract, my work also contains elements that hover just on the frontier between representation and abstraction. Building up the surface of my paintings in a series of consecutive layers, spreading the paint thickly with a palette knife, thinly with a wide varnish brush or rubbing it in with a piece of rag, then scraping into previous layers, rubbing paint off to expose what is underneath, I am searching to uncover thoughts, emotions and truths that cannot be expressed in mere words. |
