CHRISTINE JOHNSON
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BIOGRAPHY
Christine Johnson is a visual artist, specialising in painting and printmaking. She has presented over twenty-five solo exhibitions in Australia since 1989.
In 2012 Johnson was a Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria and undertook research on early Australian botanical art. The result of this extensive research was the touring exhibition Voyages Botanical.
She continues to develop work around botanical themes and is currently inspired by Mallee botanist Eileen Ramsay (née Couve). Eileen Ramsay’s brother, Alan Couve was one of the soldiers whose story is featured in Five Soldiers.
Christine Johnson is represented by Fox Galleries, Melbourne.
CONNECTION TO BALDESSIN STUDIO
The story of Baldessin Studio is about fostering creativity and, that rarest of things, finding solitude and companionship in the one place.
When I first came up to the Baldessin Studio I was in search of a method, a process that would allow me to draw the imagery of botany and history together. From my room at the State Library of Victoria where I held a Creative Fellowship in 2012, I would head out towards St Andrews, often with the car jammed with paper and all the materials of a printmaker. As the crush of the city gave way to open spaces and sunny vistas of the Yarra Valley, I would know I was on my way to a very special place. A place where for some years now, I have always found the joy of creativity and warmth of friendship in unique balance. - Christine Johnson
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Five Soldiers
The perishable nature of flowers is a metaphor for the fleeting quality of life.
In these artworks I have introduced wildflowers to serve as emblems of remembrance just as one would offer a flower as a tribute at a graveside or light a candle in church.
As living forms, as art, and as symbols, the wildflowers that soldiers encountered in WWI Europe help us negotiate the unimaginable enormity of war and deepen the solemnity of remembrance.
[https://theconversation.com/flowers-remembrance-and-the-art-of-war-86768]
These images are created from my own pencil, charcoal and pastel drawings, reproduced as archival pigment prints and over-printed with solar-plate engravings.
Voyages Botanical is artist Christine Johnson’s tribute to the untamed treasures of Australia’s vast native flower garden. It is indeed a voyage: through rare and wonderful landscapes, but also through our botanical heritage and history.
Voyages Botanical was inspired by Johnson’s time as a Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria. Her research, which drew on the library’s collection of rare books of botanical illustration, took her back to the pioneering work of early botanical artists including Sydney Parkinson, Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Ferdinand Bauer. This was the beginning of Johnson’s own journey that led to the creation of the suite of prints at Baldessin Studio.
The book
CHRISTINE JOHNSON Voyages Botanical, Short documentary on Youtube:
