Ellamatta, 1987 - 1988

MICHAEL JOHNSON
Ellamatta, 1987-1988
Oil on linen
210 x 450 cm

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Artist Michael Johnson, titled Ellamatta, 1987. Michael Johnson painted this work, titled Ellamatta, as a commission for the Darling Harbour collection. Johnson works in layers, using brushes, palette knives, and squeezing directly from the tube like toothpaste, creating repeated rhythms and generous pictorial fields of colour. Whilst abstract, his paintings have divisions which suggest spatial effects, such as a dark-coloured earthy foreground, a mid-ground of water with its movements and flickering reflections of light on the water, and a possible horizon line at the top with a lighter atmosphere above that. Johnson remains an abstract painter with unswerving conviction.