Nicholas William Johnson (b. 1982, Honolulu, Hawaii) is a painter who lives in London, although his paintings carry traces of his birthplace with their intense hues and occasionally tropical – often invented – botanies. The unnatural colouration and regimented arrangements of his plants point at clandestine models of order and sentience in the natural world that lie outside the boundaries of ordinary methods of perception. His paintings can be seen as renderings of his research on and long fascination with the subject of plant consciousness, interspecies communication and ancient technologies of perceptual and cognitive augmentation. These paintings are underpinned by an idiosyncratic academicism, most often recorded in encyclopaedic texts and catalogues that accompany exhibitions of his work. 

 

Recent exhibitions include John Moore’s Painting Prize, Walker Museum of Art, (Liverpool), Inns of Molten Blue, Plus-One, (Antwerp), Dewdrinker, Montoro 12, (Rome), Secrets in the Carbon Atom, Podium, (Oslo), The Catlin Prize, (London), and Saatchi New Sensations (London)

 

His work has been covered by Artsy, Elephant Magazine, Nero, Studio International, Apollo Magazine, Dazed, Harper’s Bazaar, The Financial Times, The Times.