Johanna Melvin

(b 1951, United Kingdom. Lives and works in London)

Johanna Melvin is an abstract painter whose work references architectural detail and the urban environment. Her paintings are built through a finely layered process of decision-making about colour; spatial relationships and the physical qualities of paint; negotiating a finely spun balance between the incidental and intentional. A starting point or inspiration for this process might be found in architectural drawings; a window; an open door or a shadow cast along a wall. Other kinds of fleeting visual sensations informing her work and its preoccupation with the painterly and sometimes cursive; might be the incidental brush-marks found on a whitewashed window; cityscapes or found colour relationships in the urban environment that catch her the eye.