Roxie Johnson
Hyde Park, New York
Finding the beauty in vulnerability and the resilience of human spirit / SMALL WORKS 🦋 HUGE IMPACT.
Message
"Born and raised in a tiny suburb of NYC, I grew up a quirky, shy, pencil-thin young girl...
At the early age of three, I took my first Crayola crayon and bravely drew a blue line across the family RCA tv screen, saving Winky Dink from grave peril. (I have just dated myself.) Little did I know I had transformed one brief moment to create a new reality, a magical process soon to become my own personal voice.
I fondly remember gravitating to worlds of the small and intimate. Long hours spent tearing apart and reconstructing tossed items provided a release from the daily chatter, confusion, and stresses of growing up. And through my delightfully reassembled creations, I learned to trust my curiosity and inner muse. Full circle, my favorite childhood pastime remains a trademark of the work I produce today.
Looking back on my life as artist and educator, I’m reminded of my father’s work ethic, and how his infectious belief in education and personal quest for excellence inspired my own career choice. For 30+ years, every day In the classroom posed its own unique challenge. I loved developing ‘hands-on’ studio curriculum, and I grew to understand how essential the arts were, not only to the entire learning process, but in providing emotionally supportive and stabile environments for young creatives.
Earning my MFA with honors from Syracuse University led to my Hudson Valley relocation in 1984, where my artistic endeavors wandered into the printmaking realm for close to two decades. In search of an innovative and safer etching process, solar plate caught my eye, and most memorably, the privilege to study with Master printers Dan Welden and Ron Pokrasso.
Once retired from the public education system, I traveled the northeastern seaboard to paint and write. Crossing paths to work with the late artist, mentor and friend, Skip Lawrence, marked a dramatic shift in my work towards the abstract. The challenge felt liberating and refreshing. And today I enjoy frequenting the classroom as student in the Woodstock School of Art.
Career highlights have included the receipt of: a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 2 summer printmaking fellowships at Skidmore College, with additional studies conducted in Florence, Italy and Santa Fe, NM. Select awards have been received from the Palm Spring Art Museum and NAWA (National Association of Women Artists), along with recognition in the Smithsonian Institute Archives of American Art. Known widely in previous years for my own unique and meticulous approach to the etching process, I have exhibited in juried competitions nationally as well as in galleries of the Mid-Hudson and Metropolitan area.”
Statement
"Beyond impermanence: in search of the beauty in vulnerability and the resilience of human spirit…
My creative passion is significantly influenced by a fascination with those relationships that seem to lie beyond our ordinary field of awareness. I enjoy inventing intricate spatial environments where apparent randomness and disorder suggest an organization happening on a different dimensional level. Comprised of painting, drawing and print, this current body of abstract work draws attention to life’s moments where both chaos and order appear able to co-exist and cooperate. Perhaps, even thrive.
The integration of organic and inorganic form plays a significant role in my visual vocabulary and reconstructive approach. Incessant layering, erasure, and excavation are no doubt embedded in my genetic make-up. I feel at home when foraging amongst fragments of the discarded and the lost. I love the process for its ongoing definition and redefinition of densely layered surfaces and traces of human presence. Rarely are my results premeditated. And I sense a visceral dimensionality and intangible tension pulsing within each and every shifting shape and gestural mark set down.
The studio is my tool for introspection, my unadulterated open space. It’s where I lean into the invisible, in-between places. I rely on it to find comfort in embracing paradox. And I feel gratitude there for our shared humanity, vulnerability, and resilience in a world of such rapid change, decay and renewal. Join me in the conversation.”