Biography
My life and work seem to revolve around landscape in one way or another. My father, Brad Johnson, is a Landscape Architect; his father ran Johnson's Nurseries in Kingston and my mother's father was in charge of lumbermills in Northern Ontario in the first half of the last century! While I spent my early years in Toronto, every summer was spent with my grandmother on Mazinaw Lake, surrounded by towering pines and in sight of the dramatic cliffs of Bon Echo.
Although I had a passion for ballet and modern dance, I gradually moved towards the visual arts. In 1987 I worked as an assistant to Joyce Weiland as she prepared for her AGO retrospective. Having witnessed the "artist's life", I decided to study drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art.
During the last year of school, our little family lived in a medieval hilltop town in Italy and so I was able to paint the sun-filled landscape and visit the museums of Rome while my partner, Oliver Dawson, was studying opera singing! Exposure to Renaissance and Baroque art first-hand had a formidable influence on my approach. With the good fortune to study drawing with Richard Robertson and painting with Rae Johnson, Tom Dean and Graham Coughtry among others, I graduated with honours and won the 'Mrs. W.O. Forsythe Award for 4th year Women Painters'.
I have been painting professionally ever since, along with being a mother of two sons and a decade of teaching visual arts at the high school level. My landscape painting travels have also taken me to Iceland and an artist residency in Atlin Lake, B.C. In 2021 and 2022 I was honoured to be part of an artists residency program through the Pouch Cove Foundation spending several months painting the rocky shores on the east coast of Newfoundland. The sculptural formations of that sea worn landscape had a profound effect on my work. Clamoring over rock and sitting amongst lichens and berries to sketch and paint on the East Coast trail is the ultimate thrill for a landscape painter. The opportunity to have time on my own with a large studio allowed me to work at a larger scale than ever before.
My current work continues with the large and gestural approach that I began in Newfoundland. I'm exploring a minimalist approach in terms of colouration; and this work is closer to drawing in some ways. I'm returning to my first love -- dance and as always, I use music to
drive expressive movements with paint. Confining myself to a an elemental and neutral palette, I want to capture a transcendent feeling of space, without the need to "fill" the space. My first collection of this work will be presented at Lonsdale Gallery in the spring of 2023 to be followed by a second collection at Westland Gallery in 2024.
My paintings have been seen in solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, including Gurevich Fine Art and Soul Gallery in Winnipeg; Project Gallery as well as Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto; Westland Gallery in London, ON and James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland. My work is part of private and corporate collections in the U.S.A., Europe, Asia and Canada.
Although I had a passion for ballet and modern dance, I gradually moved towards the visual arts. In 1987 I worked as an assistant to Joyce Weiland as she prepared for her AGO retrospective. Having witnessed the "artist's life", I decided to study drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art.
During the last year of school, our little family lived in a medieval hilltop town in Italy and so I was able to paint the sun-filled landscape and visit the museums of Rome while my partner, Oliver Dawson, was studying opera singing! Exposure to Renaissance and Baroque art first-hand had a formidable influence on my approach. With the good fortune to study drawing with Richard Robertson and painting with Rae Johnson, Tom Dean and Graham Coughtry among others, I graduated with honours and won the 'Mrs. W.O. Forsythe Award for 4th year Women Painters'.
I have been painting professionally ever since, along with being a mother of two sons and a decade of teaching visual arts at the high school level. My landscape painting travels have also taken me to Iceland and an artist residency in Atlin Lake, B.C. In 2021 and 2022 I was honoured to be part of an artists residency program through the Pouch Cove Foundation spending several months painting the rocky shores on the east coast of Newfoundland. The sculptural formations of that sea worn landscape had a profound effect on my work. Clamoring over rock and sitting amongst lichens and berries to sketch and paint on the East Coast trail is the ultimate thrill for a landscape painter. The opportunity to have time on my own with a large studio allowed me to work at a larger scale than ever before.
My current work continues with the large and gestural approach that I began in Newfoundland. I'm exploring a minimalist approach in terms of colouration; and this work is closer to drawing in some ways. I'm returning to my first love -- dance and as always, I use music to
drive expressive movements with paint. Confining myself to a an elemental and neutral palette, I want to capture a transcendent feeling of space, without the need to "fill" the space. My first collection of this work will be presented at Lonsdale Gallery in the spring of 2023 to be followed by a second collection at Westland Gallery in 2024.
My paintings have been seen in solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, including Gurevich Fine Art and Soul Gallery in Winnipeg; Project Gallery as well as Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto; Westland Gallery in London, ON and James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland. My work is part of private and corporate collections in the U.S.A., Europe, Asia and Canada.
To purchase Lisa Johnson's work, please contact:
Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto
Westland Gallery, London
Soul Gallery, Winnipeg, MB
James Baird Gallery, NL
Quinns of Tweed Fine Art
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