Artist Statement (Late 2025)
Currently, I’m focusing on how perception can slip into distortion - how forms invert, and how the mind deceives itself. I’m looking at a small handful of myths in this exploration, including of Diana and Acteon and Pentheus and Dionysus.
More widely, the hypnagogic state is a central influence in my work. In the threshold between waking and sleep, reality feels both vivid and unstable. Forms waver, dissolve, or recombine in unfamiliar ways. My paintings try to hold something of that dreamlike ambiguity: the sense of an image flickering between coherence and collapse.
The nude body also appears regularly in my work. I’m interested in skin as a charged surface: exposed, sometimes overwhelming, and culturally loaded. 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.
I use oil paint both thickly and thinly. My paintings comprise of multiple conflicting layers, which add a subtle distortion to each piece. I often return to “pentimento”, meaning the visible trace of a previous mark, as a kind of visual echo that gently animates the figures.
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’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 often begin with small colour studies that 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 also become increasingly drawn to the colours of gardens and foliage - working from memory or observation, sometimes painting en plein air.
I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from Baroque painting, especially Rubens, for his treatment of flesh and compositional excess. But I’m equally influenced by themes such as 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.
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.