Fine Art Paintings

Christine Johnson's Fine Art Showing ( Art Biography )

    Christine Johnson started her career on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands where she painted and sold numerous landscapes, still life and portraits in the late 70's. Her art work was exhibited in the Old Custom House in 1978 as featured Artist of the Month. She has since traveled the world to exotic places, painting the scenes. Her style has been said to be Primitive and her paintings carry a Historical value as they record the details at the time the painting was painted. The media is both acrylics and oils. She paints on location recording the mood and atmosphere of the day and capturing a feeling associated with the location. Her paintings include scenes from the mystical Mayan Ruins of Mexico, the lush green landscape of the Virgin Islands, mountain and desert scenes from Arizona, and cityscapes from Austin, Texas. She also paints still life and modern art.

    While pursing a career in Computer Programming in Austin, Texas, she kept an active art studio for 10 years located on the popular South Congress Ave. Her art expanding into a business, Sailaway Designs, which specialized in original fine art paintings, unique silk screens, and free form ceramics. She has maintained a Caribbean theme through the years, and after returning to St. Croix to live, has painted many of the local landscape scenes. She is starting a new series to capture some of the Island's historical sugar mills.

    Her style has been coined as "Primitive" . She paints from what she sees, strictly from life, without the use of photographs. Some say this gives the pictures a storybook effect, a window into a time and place in the real world. She has captured many fine details, which seem to "date" the paintings. Landscapes change over the years, more homes are built, changing the view from a pristine wooded mountain to a populated hillside.

    While Ms. Johnson's work is uncannily accurate in its portrayal of hills, roads and buildings, it is also highly interpretive and a bit whimsical, almost compulsive in its detail. Horizons sometimes slope or curve, seemingly bulging to accommodate the large amount of information the painter has chosen to include in her view. Compositions are crowded with specifics of buildings, roads, trees and hills, compacting 180 degree views into a 36 inch wide canvas. The scenes are oddly unpopulated, and the artist places herself inside the scene as it's sole occupant, This lends the viewer a chance to experience something beyond a familiar storybook view of the Buccaneer Hotel or Cane Bay; a sense of the artist's own experience is also captured. Gazing on one of these bright, childlike canvasses elicits thoughts of meditative days spent on ai sunny hilltop, dipping a brush into a palette of bright blues and greens, and taking the time to really LOOK. This retrospective of her works over three decades showcases the artist's irrefutable need to paint.