Johanna Melvin standing in art studio behind lime green chair and paint bucket, surrounded by artworks

In the studio 2025. Photo by Yanis Angel.

About my work.

I am a London-based artist whose practice is rooted in a process-led approach, where intuition and accident are balanced by a strong sense of structure and order. The interplay between control and gestural freedom is central to my work, inviting the viewer to engage with both its formal and intuitive qualities.

I never plan a painting in advance. While I may begin with a colour palette or idea about process, the real pleasure lies in the act of making and in not knowing how a painting will emerge. This openness allows each work to develop its own internal logic and direction.

The grid motif—intersecting horizontal and vertical lines—provides a framework within which I explore painterly gesture and colour relationships. Working in this way, building intuitively without a fixed plan, can evoke memory, place, or a state of mind. Titles arise instinctively, often referencing specific locations or past experiences.

My recent and ongoing series: Time & Motion focuses more on the cursive*, via painterly gesture. While hard-edged elements remain, these now serve to define and capture gesture’s movement in time across a surface; a shift which allows further exploration of what paint and colour relationships can do to surprise. Perhaps more importantly for me, they also highlight a recurrent theme in my work relating to handwriting - a complex neurological act of human expression, which I fear is now in growing danger of extinction due to an increasingly digital age.

(*Cursive - any style of writing in which letters are written in a flowing manner)

My work can be found on Rise Art and for a limited time only, at my Pop Up Gallery, Art Box, Unit 33 Wood Street Indoor Market, E17 3HX

 

News and Exhibitions

Palpable, curated by Nick Grindrod brings together 12 artists.
Venue: The Shop, 630 Abbeydale Road, Sheffield, S72BA
Dates : 9th of July to 23rd of July 2026

I’m very pleased to be taking part in the Walthamstow Art Trail. (Venue no 145 on the Art Trail map. )
All are invited to my pop up gallery - Art Box, (Unit 33) Wood St Indoor Market, London E17 3HX
Opening times will be Friday 5th & Sat’ 6th June, and Fri’ 12th & Sat’ 13th June.
Opening times: 10:30 am to 5 pm each day.

 

I’m delighted to have my painting Held Spaces 2025 selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show this year. The exhibition opens 16th June and runs to 23rd August in the Main Galleries, Burlington House, London.


 

Buy limited edition artworks

Discover and collect signed limited editions by Johanna Martin.

Johanna Melvin, "Ocean" (Blue), hand cut engraving on coloured card, 2025
Johanna Melvin, "Ocean" (Orange), hand cut engraving on coloured card, 2025
Johanna Melvin, "Ocean" (Pink), hand cut engraving on coloured card, 2025