Denise Johnson is an artist with a tremendous eye and respect for her medium of choice. She turns trash into treasure by using recycled scraps to make her dynamic pieces, and she allows the unruly alcohol inks to assist in the composition; they blend to create the movement that each work possesses.
"I'm Denise Johnson. I've been doing artsy things all my life. My earliest crafty memory is taking a wooden cutout of a chicken and gluing dried beans to it. Thankfully, I've picked up a few more creative skills along the way. Chickens are still with me, beans, not so much..
I have been painting with alcohol inks almost 7 years now. It is a relatively new medium. I may be the only person on earth that paints on a recycled material called Corian. Corian is usually used for high end countertops. My husband purchases scraps that would otherwise be headed for a landfill and then garage crafts beautiful and functional Corian cutting boards. I scoop up his scraps (sometimes I help myself to non-scraps, don't tell him) and transform them into beautiful works of art.
These alcohol-based inks are a very spontaneous, fast moving medium with a mind of their own. I find that if I use my intuition and follow the inks where they lead, my paintings take on a life of their own. When you look at my paintings, I want to grab your heart; draw you in and connect you to the breathtaking colors, textures and movement of the inks. As one lady commented at a recent show "Your work is so uplifting!" and like the Hokey Pokey, that's what it's all about!
I hear my soul knocking. I answer with my art."
Check out more of Denise's work online, and be sure to stop by her booth at the Minneapolis Gift & Art Expo, November 2-4, 2018 at the Minneapolis Convention Center!
www.artfulearth.com
www.facebook.com/artfulearth