Enniskillen artist Rachael Johnson is quickly making a name for herself in the work of Irish art.
Having previously exhibited in Enniskillen, Dublin, Cork, and Derry, Rachael is just about to open her latest exhibition in the John Hewitt in Belfast on 4 February, with a wine reception from 7pm.
Speaking about her latest exhibition Rachael explains: "I prefer to show untitled work. I think of my paintings as shape-shifters. I have tried to describe the process by which they come about and I am intrigued by the idea that with very little assistance on my part, images mostly emerge by themselves. I moved away from illustrative work when my travels brought me into contact with cultures where the arts are still connected to ritual, magical thinking, soul hunting and fetishism.
CAPTURE
"I sometimes try to capture the moment between dreaming and being awake, when the space around me is still tainted by the essence of an unknown scape and inexplicable elements still haunt the familiar surround, drifting away from taunting me before I can grasp and name them.
"My painting sometimes starts with an object, an amulet with a tale attached. Once the object was a barbed vertebra from the back bone of a caught fish used by the native hunter as a hook to catch the next. The oruboric twist in this tale got my gut. One day this hook took up on a line on my canvas and went looking for itself," she continued.
"There is often a big sea, and a sense of something primal that crawled out of the mud and became highly evolved so it could carve up the land in an obviously sophisticated way but is still connected by its tell-tale umbilical cord to that mud - and there are things that bite and tear."
Rachael studied Fine Arts in both Canterbury College of Art and Design and Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic, graduating with a BA Hons Degree in 1984. Following extensive world travel she moved to Dublin in 1991 to work as Artist in Residence with inner city groups including single parents, young offenders and the travelling community. As a result of her work with marginalised and minority groups Rachael became interested in the therapeutic potential of individual and creative activity and in 2002 she completed her training as an Art Therapist in the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork. She has provided Art Therapy as an intervention in psychiatric hospitals, mainstream and special schools, prisons, high security forsenic units and refuge centres. She is currently living in Derry and working with young people who are affected by abuse and violence, and young people who have emotional and behavioural difficulties and those who are on the Autistic spectrum. She also lectures on MA and MSc Art Therapy courses in Ireland and Scotland, and facilitates 'Mask-making' workshops in Belfast, Cork and Dublin.
