The Interview

For many years, artist, Nicola Joy Johnson enjoyed the challenges of creating highly realistic paintings. However, her love of bold color, shape, and texture drew her to Alexander Calder’s sculptures, the vivid paintings of František Kupka and the cubist expressions of Pablo Picasso. Their work began to beckon her down the path that led to her new home in the art world. “I learned so many important and useful disciplines from working in realism,” Johnson admits. “But I had a strong desire to process the world around me in a different and vibrant way.”

Over several years, Johnson experimented in her studio, quietly tucked away in the lush, wooded mountains of western North Carolina. She was surrounded by nature and a silence that moored her and allowed her creativity to flow unimpeded. She began to explore new techniques, carefully breaking down selected subject matter into solid shapes and hues that conveyed meaningful stories.

“I’m at peace with this glowing color-block wonderland,” Johnson says with quiet confidence. “I feel there is an endless amount of beauty to process into this form of painting. I want to share moments of introspection and the feeling of open space.” She continues, “A calm setting in a painting creates room for thinking and growth. Hopefully, it will make a person ask questions and realize answers all in one viewing.”

The concept of developing her art as a peaceful gift to the viewer is a tenet of her creative process. “I want to share something good, something our busy world may have denied us,” says Johnson. “Thankfully, this earth and all it offers to us is endless. We will never run out of personal expressions in the form of art.” Johnson continues, “Painting is therapeutic for the artist, but most of all it’s a gift to be shared with others. It becomes pointless to me otherwise.”

Johnson definitively concludes. “I am so grateful to have had the time, opportunity and space to design and alter my paintings until they reached a very balanced state that gave me the confidence to move forward with the works of art I love to create.”

You can find the original works of Nicola Joy Johnson in one of the most popular and welcoming art galleries on the east coast – the award-winning Robert Lange Studios, in Charleston, South Carolina.