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The Week 13/5/11
When Michael Johnson isn’t painting, he likes to go fishing at night, says Joyce Morgan in The Sydney Morning Herald. At night, “you have to feel what’s going on – it’s all communication by touch,” he says. Asking his students to paint blindfold gave them that same sense. Despite the shimmering bands of jewel like colour: “After a while you get a grasp on it, like the body movements of a dancer.” These often beautiful and often luminous canvases reveal Johnson as “an optimist and a natural painter”, says John McDonald, also in the Sydney Morning Herald. For Johnson, the highs and lows, times of melancholy and inspiration are contained within the universe of painting. The exuberance of these works also reflects his recovery from a long illness. In works like Qing Jifu, the “rhythmic arrangements of colour”, buoyancy and sense of space are “positively mesmeric”. What most impresses is his “rigorous” control despite the bold palette, conveying his “strong sense of the natural world”.