About

Artist Statement

In these paintings, I translate my life's experience with loss and unexpected regeneration into visual poetry.

Belief and re-imagining, ambiguity and certainty, grief and grace, loss and spiritual tenacity are the highly personal yet universal realities which compel my paintings.

Through a language of undulating, nuanced surfaces, intimate interaction with the physicality of the paint, and hundreds of layers of color, my response to life's mysteries takes form. The paintings are suffused with a strong sense of human presence and the inherent engagement of spirit.

Abstract references to water, sky, earth and air rise to the surface within viscous color fields as visual metaphors for the often ineffable experiences of the human heart.

Janis Pozzi-Johnson’s oil paintings possess a powerful sense of self-awareness; they are strikingly confident in their ability to remain calm. Her color-field canvases can feel stoic, other times elusive and yet always in a state of resolve. The works engage the viewer with their constant search for stillness. She achieves this by creating a surface that is textured and engaging, comprised of hundreds of thin layers of color. The edges of the canvas are softened with the accumulation of paint, not through excess but through patience. The paintings textured, color shifting surfaces are constantly revealing subtle nuances. 

The paintings suggest water, earth and sky though there is no representational evidence of these elements. Pozzi-Johnson is able to capture the essence of the natural world and her own emotional experience of loss and re-generation in a way that is seemingly unfixed from time and as a result her personal experience becomes universal.

The works vary greatly in size, from small to large and commanding. Sometime a single canvas is used, a resolved painting existing within a single frame. Other times, a single work is made of multiple canvases creating a more narrative tone. Each panel, resolved in it own right, is further activated by the next. Pozzi-Johnson’s paintings are at once aware yet still discovering; complete yet ever evolving.

Scott Ashley
Director of Engagement, Art Institute of Chicago