Johanna Melvin

Johanna Melvin is a London-based abstract painter whose practice is rooted in a process-led approach, where intuition and accident are balanced by a keen sense of structure and order. The interplay between control and gestural freedom is central to her work, inviting viewers to engage with both the formal qualities and the intuitive, or emotive content of each piece.

Her use of the grid motif - or intersecting horizontal and vertical lines -  combined with painterly gesture and colour play, could be seen to suggest aerial views, or psychological maps, combining personal mood, memory, or state of mind - or as the artist describes, something akin to ‘non-linear visual diary entries’.

Artwork titles often arrive intuitively, inspired by conversations, literature, song lyrics, memories, places and sometimes personal preoccupations while a work is in progress.

Johanna Melvin (b. London 1951) is based in east London where she has her studio. Fine Art studies at The School of Art, Architecture and Design (1995-98) were followed by post-graduate courses at The Essential School of Painting, where she now teaches, and Turps Banana Painting School (2016/17)

Melvin has exhibited widely in the UK including The Royal Academy of Art; Flowers Gallery, London; Zillah Bell Gallery, Yorkshire and The Contemporary Art Society. Her work was included in A Generous Space 1, curated by Matthew Burrows (OBE) at Hastings Contemporary and A Generous Space 2 at The New Art Gallery Walsall in 2022.

Johanna’s work is held in many private and public collections, including the archives of the Whitechapel Gallery and The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, and are also held in collections at The Groucho Club, Soho House and Soho Home, New York, Los Angeles and London.