Uncommon Ground
September 8
Uncommon Ground
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James F Johnston’s latest solo show at Fitzrovia Gallery brings together a striking collection of new, recent, and previously unseen work on canvas and wood.
‘Uncommon Ground’ draws on work set both in the natural world, and in the intensity of domestic interiors. The subsequent canvases present their open narratives with an often haunting quality, their layered surfaces combining a looseness of touch with an expressive and bold use of colour.
“Each picture sits between the benign and the malevolent, bright but sinister, the strangeness balanced with humour. Faces turn to meet the viewer and the gaze holds. Nothing settles too far, and that enigmatic menace, that refusal to finish, is where the life of the painting lives.” TREBUCHET arts magazine.
James Johnston
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Born in 1966, London based painter and musician James Johnston has primarily been known for his work as a musician -with his own band Gallon Drunk, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and PJ Harvey.
His turn to figurative painting initially began with working small scale in hotel rooms on tour, and as a reaction to writer’s block, subsequently becoming his primary focus as a daily studio practice.
A prolific painter, exhibiting widely in group and solo shows, his work has been used on book covers, as album artwork and featured in a variety of international arts publications, with paintings in international private collections, and the collection of the University of Chicago in Paris.
“A remarkable gift for loose, raw painting… that straightaway imprints itself on the viewer’s imagination” – The Economist.