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Big Fish
Art Collector May 2013
Janet Hawley
Since his inclusion in the landmark exhibition Field in 1968, Michael Johnson has established himself as one of Australia's most renowned artists. Janet Hawley steps into his studio to discuss his latest work... You don?t just look at a Michael Johnson painting; you experience and explore it, like a symphony concert or a long journey. And a conversation with Johnson follows the same pattern. He quotes an old Chinese proverb: ?If you don?t know where you?re going, go by the road you don?t know ? meaning the road full of discovery,? he expands. So interviewing Michael Johnson about his distinctive abstract paintings becomes a magical mystery voyage. Ask him a question about his work, his sources of inspiration, and you?ll never get a straight answer, because there isn?t one. His warm, gravelly voice will undulate, veer, dive and soar, like the intriguing lines and passages on his large canvasses, as he relates his intense feelings about things his artist?s eye sees; and then adds layers of emotion, intellect, memory. An essentially private man, Johnson explains the random things ? particularly his appreciation of nature ? that can trigger an inspiration. ?Rainbows, mirages, reflections in still water, the movement of the tides; volcanoes, cyclones, tsunamis, bushfires; the Milky Way, the path of the moon,? he begins. ?Waking up on a new day; hearing a bird call, or noticing leaves unfurling. I love the camouflage colors on birds, mammals, reptiles, fish; I love shells, eggs, stones, the bones of fish or mutton birds ?? Enter Johnson?s airy Sydney studio filled with works in various states of completion, and the whole space sings and dances with color. The wet paintings seem so alive you can almost hear them breathing. He talks about them as living beings: ?I always paint in pairs,? his arms wave. ?This is the boy, this is the girl. I try to keep the girls light and soft, and the boys more mysterious and nocturnal. But often along the way they?ll swap identities and females will become males.? As if they?re pets, Johnson will say: ?Today I fed her this color, and this is what she did, this is where she went?? Hundred of tubes of oil paints are lined on tables and the floor, along with piles of the small house paint brushes he favours. It takes Johnson three months to complete a large painting, and months, indeed years for it to dry as the intricate layering can be so thick. Often he draws in lines of paint squeezed straight from the tube, using an entire tube, or tubes, to make one line. In Johnson?s best known work there?s an architectural structure of lines, and within this is a lyrical, gloriously passionate, sometimes turbulent, sometimes pensive, combustion of energy and colour ? like the mysteries inside his own complex mind. ?I like to do the big, impossibly difficult ones first, solve them, and then I feel more comfortable moving to smaller ones,? he explains. ?I like taking risks: there?s both a fear and a love of diving into the blank canvas. ?Each painting is based on a different idea, but they all have climate change; there?s a warm one, a cool one; a wet one, a dry one. It?s about how you feel that day, and the next day when you start on it again, you may feel completely different, so you bury the previous day within itself ? but submerging the thing is what makes the magic. It?s like the big fish you don?t often see on the surface; they?re down below, keeping an eye on things,? he chortles. When he paints, he says, ?it?s like a mix between dance and music; the blood flow in my body is reacting to what?s happening in front of me. Colour is the energy my work vibrates on; once you get the melody and rhythm, you want to keep on playing? ?I meditate a lot, and watch the painting, but when I?m actually in the painting, it?s very quick. Someone timed (Willem) de Kooning?s brush stroke at 75 kms an hour!? Sometimes Johnson leafs through the stacks of notebooks he?s kept over the decades on his regular travels with wife Margo. He seeks inspirational sparks in figurative sketches he?s made of mollusk patterns in the sand, his daughter Anna swimming; sketches of old master paintings or tribal masks. Johnson also has a fiercely intellectual life, and frequently marshals up ideas he?s read, paintings he?s studied in the world?s great museums, to discuss the history of art, the use of mathematics and geometry in art. He quotes Pythagoras: ?There is geometry in the humming of the string, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.? On the other hand, Johnson seems never happier than when he?s playing with his grandchildren, or baiting a rod to go fishing. ?We?re all fishing for something,? he says, his eyes gleaming Tim Olsen DIRECTOR, TIM OLSEN GALLERY ?Michael Johnson has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, and been included in the seminal exhibitions, The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1968); the UNESCO Biennale, France (1968); the São Paulo Bienal, Brazil (1969); and The Australian Biennale, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1988).? He is represented in all major Australian state and regional collections, and significant corporate and private collections. Beagle Press published a substantial monograph on Michael Johnson?s work in 2004. ?Johnson enjoys consistency in sales, the value of his work increasing incrementally over the years. In the current shift towards conceptualism and away from abstraction, painting as a medium has become less respected in a fickle art world. Johnson has remained largely immune from these trends.? Having taken Johnson to the Hong Kong Art Fair (2009), I had a hunch that like local art lovers here, Asian collectors may relate to the nuances that allude to water, iridescent light and the nocturne sky. We sold several works. Johnson has seductiveness for the instantaneous buyer, but more importantly, his work serves the concept of slow intelligence (visual osmosis of the memory) and after time, many are drawn back. Johnson maintains a consistent, steady market for these reasons. ?Unequivocally, there will be a time when there will be less Johnsons to meet the market demands. Like Mark Rothko, the deeper metaphor, dexterity, palette and spiritual realms of his work will never be forgotten in the hallmarks of great painting. Current and future collectors and true connoisseurs of art will always cherish Johnson?s work.? Janet Hawley Barry Pearce EMERITUS CURATOR, ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES ?As he approaches his 75th birthday the paintings of Michael Johnson, his colour pushed to the limits of intensity and a constructiveness that will not be broken by time, are easy to like, and easy to misunderstand. ?For although Johnson is blessed with an astounding verbal eloquence, quizzed too closely about the emotional truth beneath the decorative power of his work, he is liable to run for cover, referring one to an obscure Moorish poem. Quite rightly, it is not his responsibility to explain. ?So, he can be difficult to reach. Yet within him is a generous spirit yearning to share an exhilarating experience: like a dancer levitating mysteriously across stage; a trumpeter improvising beyond musical scales to unshackle some innermost secret; a geologist or astronomer who has discovered a miracle which is not just about science. ?His explorative methodology has been unequivocal. From the bushland of Mosman where he was born, to the metropolises of London and New York, and back to the heart of Sydney, his journey has been a long one with abstraction, and the slow crystallization of an elemental belief: ...we came from the minerals of the universe and we?re made up of minerals. So there?s no divide between us and the whole universe. (Michael Johnson) ?Up and down the picture plane, shallow or deep space, with nuances of mood and colour where he seems almost lost in self immolation, Johnson has evolved a vernacular by which we might attune to the essential rationale of our existence.? Janet Hawley