Charlotte Johnson

My primary interest is modern day romance, concerning the over exaggeration of the feeling of love associated with romantic objects and notions by the media and consumerism for their own profits, yet almost everyone feeds this because they all still want to be a part of the teddy bears and flowers and chocolates for some reason - perhaps expectation? This is what I have been trying to figure out through my work.

I consider my subject to be a modern day romance, interpreted through painting, photographs, drawings and some sculpture/displays of associated romantic themed objects.

I am exploring how displaying romance and love in a way that shows the tackiness of the surrounding “rules” and setting them up in a way that almost drowns the viewer in this sickly, busy, irrational feeling of love and lust with reds, pinks and purples that we most commonly associate with this emotion - and these colours also bring a lot of other feeling into it - i.e red can make us angry depending on the situation. I created works of all different sizes to make the eye scatter across the wall of my salon hang style - making it feel like the brain when it falls in love - irrational. I also took photos on a disposable camera to make the images very spontaneous, as well as collecting “romantic objects” and then drawing them. Displaying the works in the salon style gave a mixed reaction, mostly positive, and using a lot of reds was interesting to continue to play with because some people felt uncomfortable or intimidated by it and made a joke or two to ease that feeling and some just simply cooed over the romance and spoke of their own romantic encounters - which was extremely intriguing! An idea which I would like to expand on, perhaps these love stories I hear surrounding my work could be recorded with sound and paintings - a future idea I had recently.