Artist Statement (Early 2025)
Recently, I’ve been focused on painting skin - how light moves across it, how it shifts between translucency and solidity, and the subtle undertones that emerge through thin layers of paint. As part of a shift in my technique, I’ve been using glazing to build depth without relying on heavy impasto, aiming to create a sense of movement and fluidity with less paint—just enough to suggest form without over-explaining it.
I’m drawn to that moment when an image begins to unravel—or, just begins to coalesce. One of my central influences is the hypnagogic state—that liminal space between waking and sleep, where forms flicker, merge, and dissolve. I want my paintings to hold something of that instability, where the image shifts as you look—always slightly out of reach.
The nude body appears often in my work—usually 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.
At the same time, I’m interested in less tangible, internal states—emotions, intuitions, and sensations that resist clear depiction. My paintings try to hold both strands together: the raw physicality of the body, and the diffuse, unstable nature of the mind. I’m curious about where they meet—those porous spaces between inner and outer worlds.
Colour has become increasingly central to how I work. I start with small colour studies, which often evolve into the backgrounds of larger paintings. These early passages set the tone and energy of the piece. I used to look to Old Master palettes, but recently I’ve been drawn to the colours of gardens and foliage—working from observation or memory, often painting en plein air. That shift has changed both my palette and my brushwork, which now often echoes the forms of leaves, stems, or petals. These backgrounds are sometimes becoming works in their own right.
I’ve also been working with diptychs, using the break between canvases to disrupt the composition and introduce a visual glitch or rupture. It’s a formal device that mirrors my interest in fragmentation—originally explored through the body, and now extended to the surface and structure of the painting itself.
Earlier in my practice, my paintings were defined by thick, oily surfaces—built up with linseed oil to create a gloopy, almost bodily liquidity. While that still lingers in places, I’m now more often using thin washes, mimicking the translucency of watercolour. I want the light to feel like it’s coming from within the surface, not just sitting on top of it. I often return to pentimento—the visible trace of a previous mark—as a kind of visual echo that gently animates the figures.
Historically, I’ve drawn inspiration from Baroque painting—especially Rubens—for his treatment of flesh and dynamic, overflowing compositions. I’m also interested in the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and how transformation appears across art history—from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Renaissance frescoes and Old Master drawings. While myth and literature still underpin parts of the work, my focus has shifted toward materiality—how paint, surface, and process alone can evoke a feeling, an atmosphere, or a kind of instability.
I hold a BA in Art History 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, West 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.