Spirit of a Place
Lisa Johnson, "Massif," 2017
oil on canvas, 60" x 120"
It’s hard to miss the energy of Lisa Johnson’s large triptych, which portrays a striking granite cliff that rises some 300 feet from the dark waters of Mazinaw Lake in Eastern Ontario.
The painting, Massif, is unmistakable as landscape, but is also something more – gestural and physical, it embodies the energy of the massive rock form that stretches almost a mile along one of Ontario’s deepest lakes.
Clearly, Johnson is not interested in photo-realistic painting.
“It’s less about the details of a place optically,” she says. “It’s more about feeling the spirit of a place, the energy, just trying to capture that experience.”
Johnson, who is based in Woodbridge, north of Toronto, spent many of her childhood summers at her grandmother’s cottage on the lake, and still visits regularly.
Neil Peter Dyck, "Hatzic Abbey #2," 2016
Neil Peter Dyck, "Under Rivers," 2016
Massif is one of the works she is showing at Gurevich Fine Art in Winnipeg until March 25 as part of a two-person show, Land Marks. The show also features fragmented and dreamlike paintings on board by Vancouver-based artist Neil Peter Dyck, who is from Manitoba.
Johnson generally sketches on site, then works in her studio on large-scale paintings, often barely making reference to her preparatory sketches. She has a background in dance, and that physicality emerges as she works.
“I’ve been painting for over 20 years and I find that with every painting, you’re learning something new,” she says. “You try to respond in the moment to what’s going on. You might make a mark and react to that mark and then it leads you in a certain direction and then before you know it’s becoming something else than what you started with. It evokes a certain mood, or a certain memory that you have of a place.”
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Lisa Johnson, "Traces, Iceland," 2017
oil on canvas, 36" x 48"
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Lisa Johnson, "Fire and Ice," 2016
oil on canvas, 48" x 36"
Johnson visited Iceland last year and included some paintings based on that experience in the show.
“In Ontario, you’ve got the pre-Cambrian forces that shaped the Canadian Shield,” she says. “But in Iceland, you’re witness to the forces of nature, right in front of you, still bubbling … lava, waterfalls and active volcanoes. It’s really incredible. And it’s very primordial and that appealed to me.”
