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 SOTA Marketplace.

 

News and Exhibitions

Coming to Terrace Gallery soon…
The exhibition title ‘Plumbline of a Dancer’ was inspired by abstract painter Joan Mitchell, who famously described her approach to painting as having a "plumb-line" like that of a dancer. In her early years Mitchell had been an athlete and competitive figure skater, and the ‘plumb line’ analogy is an imaginary line from the top of the head to the floor, used with great reliance by dancers to maintain a vital sense of balance and stability. This sense of equilibrium and structure was instilled in Mitchell and is paradoxically evident within her often frenetic, and freely improvisational paintings.

The works in this exhibition were selected in response to this sensibility; either for their gestural and painterly qualities, sometimes pitched against - control, depth, weight, a sense of ratio, the vertical and horizontal, or for their pared back geometric sensibility that delineates an intrinsic sense of gravity, structure and balance.

 

Different Together.
A solo exhibition of recent paintings at Pictorem Gallery. the dates are; Wed 4th November to Friday 27th,
Pictorem Gallery is at 383 Hoe Street, Walthamstow London E17 9AP
Open Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 5:30 pm
Please note: The gallery will be closed on Saturday 7th November

 

West Meon, (2026),
Acrylic, Flashe and spray paint on canvas
53 x 43 cm

Time & Motion no 2, (2026)
Acrylic and Flashe on canvas.
80 x 80 cm.

I’m delighted to have had my painting Held Spaces 2025 selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show this year. The exhibition is now closed.


Buy limited edition artworks

Discover and collect signed limited editions by Johanna Martin.

Chair, 2025, Giclee print from original cyanotype, printed on Hahnemule etching paper, 300 gsm.
A limited edition of 15, signed and numbered verso,
dimensions 28.5 x 18.6 cm unframed .
£95.00 not including p&p / shipping.

Leaves, 2025, Giclee print from original cyanotype, printed on Hahnemule etching paper, 300 gsm.
A limited edition of 20, signed and numbered verso, dimensions 28.6 x 27 cm unframed .
£95.00 not including p&p / shipping.

Spoon, 2025, Giclee print from original cyanotype, printed on Hahnemule etching paper, 300 gsm.
A limited edition of 15 signed and numbered verso,
dimensions 27.5 x 18 cm unframed .
£130.00 not including p&p/shipping.