Victoria Johns
Dunstable, Bedfordshire
My studio is my happy place! Step into my INFINITE world where exploration knows no bounds and my creative output can take many different forms.
Message
Victoria studied glass design at Staffordshire University in the mid-1990s. Today, her practice centres on mixed-media abstract painting and printmaking, developed from her studio on the Bedfordshire–Buckinghamshire border. Her education includes a BA (Hons) in Design (Glass), an Art Foundation Diploma - Distinction from Barnfield College, and a series of residential workshops undertaken between 2016 and 2021 to broaden and energise her practice.
Her work has received recognition through the 2025 Jackson’s Art Prize Long List, an editorial feature in Printmaking Today (2020), and the St Cuthberts Mill Award at Morley College Gallery in 2017. She has completed public commissions including Our Dunstable and the John Rafters Memorial Plaque for the Wildlife Trust.
Victoria is an active member of the Printmakers Council and the Wynd Gallery cooperative, a long-standing volunteer at MK Gallery, and a regular exhibiting artist at VK Gallery. Her solo exhibition INFINITE was held in 2024 in the Wynd Gallery as well as a Duo exhibition in 2025, complementing an extensive record of group shows since 2012.
Statement
Victoria's art practice as an abstract Painter and Printmaker, sees her drawing, mark making and creating with a mix of mediums. She finds these two disciplines complement and inform each other and allow for a wider exploration of subject matter.
Victoria focuses on new ways of seeing the world around her and is often drawn to aerial views. “Whenever possible I’ll grab the window seat in an aeroplane so I can snap away at the birds-eye views passing me by.”
"My recent collections, mark a departure from a tendency to activate the entire surface of a board, canvas, or sheet of paper. Although I continue to draw upon the aerial source material central to my aerial view and above and beyond explorations, current work delves further into how landscapes shift when seen from above. From this elevated viewpoint, familiar rural and urban environments fragment into intricate, abstracted forms that often appear unfamiliar, challenging conventional three-dimensional perception.
I am paring back to create clarity and breathing space within the composition. By selectively reducing coverage, I bring chosen elements into sharper focus. I enjoy manipulating scale, contrasting positive and negative space, and employing a mixture of media to generate visual and textural tension. Gentle tonal passages sit in conversation with bold marks, dominant shapes, and assertive mark making, resulting in a dynamic, carefully considered composition."