Patrick Johnson

I’ve always been drawn to a place between clarity and ambiguity. Between movement and stillness. In my work I try to explore a rich emotional, uncertain space and the depth of expression that can be found in simple, repeated actions.

These paintings are small, personal spaces where the seemingly rudimentary becomes idiosyncratic and rhythmic—then breaks down into undefinable feeling. They works play with basic elements that are layered and reoriented until they begin to suggest meaning, but without resolution. Curves and straights loop, echo, and push against each other, forming systems that feel both familiar and unpredictable. Color is used not to describe, but to move: to slow the eye, to redirect attention, to create pauses and pulses across the surface. An unyielding geometry is teased, then undermined by shifts of scale and overlapping, quivering edges that won’t adhere to any grid. The paintings gesture toward the iterative logics of nature, architecture, or language, but ultimately fail to settle into any system.

In the end, that failure points to an unfolding in the uniquely personal act of seeing. The paintings’ refusal to clarify themselves finally becomes a hopeful request to look at just what is here, with an open e...

BFA - University of Delaware

Group Shows -
1993 - Delaware Art Museum Biennial