The Old Guard Painting

Biography Abra Johnson lives in Atlanta, and after a long career in Graphic Design, picked up painting. She practices Encaustic as well as traditional oil painting – focusing on encaustic in the summer months when she can work outdoors for ventilation, and oils during the cooler months of the year. She has a BFA as well as a minor in art history, which sparked her interest in encaustic as one of the oldest painting methods. Artist Statement (Oils) I started working with oils after I’d been an encaustic artist for many years. As an encaustic artist I am always pushing the medium to work like oils, so my transition to oils was very easy and seamless. When I became a fulltime artist, I was looking for a medium that could get me through the colder months, when working outside with wax was impossible. I work in a style mixture of direct and indirect oil painting, both layering parts slowly over time, as well as blocking parts in one sitting. If I am painting a boat for example, the soft background and water will be indirect, while the sail or masting, more direct and all at once. I most enjoy painting as precisely as I can. I struggle with anxiety, and this is how I lose my frustrations and forget where and what I’m dealing with for a short period of time. If I’m hyper-focused, I’m happy. I paint mostly from photographic reference and enjoy the challenge of copying what I see. My husband calls me a parrot. I also enjoy the challenge of painting oils without any solvents. I’m as much about the materials as I am about what I’m painting. I like a clean workspace as much as a clean method of making art. Artist Statement (Encaustic) Encaustic wax is frustrating, complicated, and doesn’t always go your way. For many it may be too frustrating to work with, but for me it’s exactly what I need. I suffer from severe anxiety. My anxiety is somewhere in the arena of OCD but manifests as a fear of losing self-control. I have a lot of panic attacks that often come out of nowhere and happen for almost no reason. You can imagine this makes doing almost anything outside of the home very challenging and mentally exhausting. This medium helps me deal with that anxiety—helps me face this fear of losing control and stability, especially when it comes to hot wax painting. Wax can’t be perfect as much as I try to make it. It’s not always going to behave the same way from one day to the next.