Nicholas Johnson
CHRONOLOGY
1982 Born: Honolulu, Hawaii
2002-05 BA King's College, Halifax
2005-06 Assistant to Ernst Fuchs, Klagenfurt, Austria
2008-09 Mentorship with Nancy Stevens, Antigonish, Nova Scotia
My painting illustrates a sustained interest in romantic and visionary rural motifs. This course of inquiry began during my undergraduate studies where I focused on German and British Romanticism and aesthetic theory. I want my paintings to explore and knowingly describe the problem of painting with traditional motifs in a contemporary context.
In the last 10 years Peter Doig set somewhat of a precedent for contemporary artists who work with landscape and figurative motifs. Critic Matthew Collings wrote that "...Doig's acheivement is to give the audience what it thinks it wants, while remaining connected to some kind of genuine painting culture." What is genuine painting culture and what, if anything, prevents an audience from wanting to engage with it? I think it is this critical attitude that modern painters working within traditional genres must answer to: that we are somehow ignorant of other meanings in art. The romantic 'realism' of painters like Daniel Richter, Hernan Bas, Verne Dawson, Jules DeBalincourt and Kaye Donachie are evidence that romanticism is an increasingly established genre in contemporary painting with the potential to move in diverse directions. Yet it still, often, is received negatively by critics. In what ways does the work of these painters who work with figurative and landscape motifs, remain connected to genuine painting culture and in what ways does it depart? What is the value of doing one or the other?