Johanna Melvin

Johanna Melvin is an abstract painter abstract painter whose work references architectural detail and the every-day experience of living in an urban environment. Her use of colour, gesture and hard-edges in her paintings aims to create active landscapes of emotion, memory and thought.

Training and Qualifications

The London-born artist is based in east London and has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art studies from The School of Art, Architecture and Design (1995-98). She also pursued two post-graduate courses at leading alternative painting schools: Turps Banana (2016-17) and The Essential School of Painting, where she now teaches.

Johanna Melvin’s Style and Practice

The artist negotiates a fine balance between the incidental and intentional. Her abstract expressionist works work appears at once considered, yet spontaneous; energetic yet harmonious. Johanna takes inspiration from fleeting visual sensation - architectural details such as windows; a shadow cast by an open door, or even the lowly garden shed. Combining bold colours and cursive brushstrokes, the artist creates textures that echo the hard edges and sharp points of city centres, while also portraying their beauty and energy.

Exhibitions & Collections

Johanna has exhibited widely in the UK, including multiple times at The Royal Academy of Art and Flowers Gallery, London. She has also shown at Zillah Bell Gallery, Yorkshire and The Contemporary Art Society. Recent solo exhibitions were at 15 Bateman Street and House of St Barnabas, Soho London. Johanna's work is held in private and public collections, including Whitechapel Gallery Archives; The Groucho Club and Soho House art collections and the Art Gazette virtual platform. She currently has works in Soho Home studios in New York and Los Angeles, and also the Westbourne Grove Soho Home studio in London.

Johanna also curates and teaches painting at The Essential School of Painting, an alternative art school based in north London.