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 a particular 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.
In more recent works, painterly gesture has come to the fore as an alternative to the grid. While hard-edged elements remain, they now serve to define and contain gesture’s unruly movement across the surface. This shift allows me to further explore texture, as well as the balance between weight, contrast, and the interplay of negative and positive space.
Ocean (Pink), 2025. Buy this limited edition print.
News & exhibitions
We launched this new collaboration at They Come They Sit They Go Project Space, Finch Cafe, 12 Sidworth St, London Fields, London E8 3 SD in May 2025.
Find us now on Artsy.
Postcards for Seyðisfjörður, a mail art project in collaboration with Sluice and LungA School, Iceland. Organised by H_A_R_D_P_A_I_N_T_I_N_G
The exhibition is now travelling to another European Embassy - details to follow soon
Buy limited edition prints
Discover and collect signed limited edition prints by Johanna Martin.
