Emma Stone-Johnson works in oil, acrylic, pigment and ink on canvas to investigate abstraction with a subtle liquid palette of diffuse and tonal colour. Her lyrical handling and delicacy of controlled touch makes for pictures which are complex networks of sinuous and dynamically gestural marks. Stone-Johnson’s pictures are products of a rigorous studio practice, where technique is quietly deployed for sophisticated and shimmering effect. Her various media are expertly manipulated to bring about the necessary interactions; her colour is muddy, but clear, her brush marks are not random, but charged and strategically placed. The relationship between the various elements eschews the frenzy of expressionism, in favour of a more detached consideration of aesthetic effect. Richly seductive, suffused with light and excited with a refined daftness of touch, these images toy and flirt with the eye colour. Colour, tone, shape, mark and texture glide around each other, constantly repositioning and adjusting to make images that are forever in flux and motion. Under our gaze the pictures make and re-make themselves in a dance of causality testament to the painter’s ability to harness her creative imagination to an organising principle.
ARTIST: Emma Stone-Johnson
