David Johns

I am a painter working primarily in watercolour but also in acrylic and make paintings which are based on a composition of line, colour, shape and form. I use traditional techniques and as I work on them, paintings evolve to finish in varying degrees of abstraction. Drawing is the essential starting point for all my paintings and during the process, shapes and abstracted forms take over. Colour soon becomes dominant but all are held together within the structured composition. Subjects which currently dominate my work include evocative landscapes and other natural and rural environments. I work primarily from source material in sketchbooks and from my photographs of a variety of landscape and natural features. Compositions are designed to evoke an impression of a place or a regional landscape without necessarily being of a specific location. I spent my career as a teacher of young people and adults after graduating from the Central School of Art in London in the early 1970s.   I now share a garden studio with my son Will in which we benefit from working both together and independently!