Physical Description
- Medium
- ink, graphite
- Support
- paper
- Dimensions
- 76 cm 56.8 cm (Object)
- Object Description
- This drawing is of Orchids. In addition to her career as a well-known and celebrated studio potter, Charmian Johnson (1939-2020) maintained a life-long drawing practice. Her nominal subject was flowers from places she knew: the West Coast, Hawaii and Morocco. But in these drawings, one finds a concern for order, for transcendent design, for style, figuration and abstraction. This drawing, like others in the Belkin’s collection that began in the 1980s, are careful studies of plant life from Johnson’s own garden (foxglove, blackberries) and her travels in Hawaii and Morocco (anthurium). Johnson’s earliest drawings were influenced by Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles; these were popularly revived in the 1960s and are the basis of psychedelic graphic design. Johnson’s more mature work has a more organic rather than imposed design order. Some of the sketches play with figuration and abstraction more than the finished works do. While Johnson meant a drawing to be finished when she signed it, many of the “finished” drawings were never “finished;” some were worked on over a period of years and put away to come out again. This “incompleteness” is part of her aesthetic, revealing both the deep thoughtfulness and the obsessive nature of her drawing practice.
History
- Collection
- –
- Credit Line
- Gift of Patricia Fulljames, on behalf of the Estate of Charmian Johnson, 2024
- Related Exhibitions
- –
Descriptions are works in progress and may be updated as new descriptive practices, research and information emerge. To help improve this record, please contact us.
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