Nicholas Johnson

My paintings are often comparable to journaling, they are moments in time or feelings that I wanted to capture and process. I've been engaged with art since I was young, mainly fascinated with details and realism-- but my work now tends to include more expressionistic elements, surrealism, and abstraction. I've been drawing since elementary school, and began painting towards the end of highschool. My work when I first started consisted of graffiti, landscape and stylized portraits. After studying at MassArt for my Bachelor's in Painting, my work's color, texture, and vision for my work has been more refined and mature. Now realistic portraiture, figure, expressive abstraction and surrealism make up the bulk of my body of work in these recent years, since my vision for visual art's role in my life has become more clear. I draw inspiration from those around me, close friends, relatives, partners, and sometimes a stranger who I feel a connection with. My goal is to portray places and people in the most authentic way possible. Through textures, color, and composition, I aim to illustrate people, places, and experiences in a way that is realistic and genuine to the human experience. 

While I am at the residency I've decided to focus on surrealism, abstraction, and portraiture. In recent months I've spent lots of time creating paintings and drawings that I feel are a balance between realism and abstraction. I've moved towards using landscape and open areas, as well as live figure models and miniature figurines to play with proportion and scale. The paintings I create during this residency will consist of landscapes, portraiture, figures, and abstraction all funneled through the idea of balancing representational work along with its opposite. 

 

Artcubator Pop-Up Exhibition - March 3-13

Artcubator Artist Talk - March 5, 3PM