In my paintings I create spaces that are unexpected and disquieting. I use the human figure to convey emotional or psychological states. Freud’s attraction-repulsion dynamic; it is about a familiar experience made strange; it reveals something significant just below consciousness. I work to achieve this familiarity in my paintings. My intention is to create contradictions that disorient viewers.

 

One way I invite this occurrence is by morphing human bodies—giving them extra appendages, distorted torsos, incomplete limbs, and shared body parts. This allows me to suggest the mystifying or unaccepted thoughts and emotions I feel most people have.

 

There is no horizon line in my paintings and at times there seems to be no gravity. I avoid tangible atmospheres. Using the figures as formal elements brings me joy. I strive to straddle the line between abstract and representational. I try to paint states of mind.

 

The use of contrast in my work can be seen in the application of paint on the figures. The broken line of hues creates a lightness and liveliness. It also gives volume to the forms by suggesting reflected light. I strive to create a nonphysical world, a dream-like mood in which ambiguity plays an important role. Uncertainty and inconclusiveness make my work more stimulating and challenging. These qualities trigger ambivalent responses.

 

In some cases I try to convey an experience of realization and acceptance. Throughout my life, through an ongoing process of change and growth, I have experienced such feelings. In other cases I attempted to depict the connections and disconnections we experience in life. All humans have intense, emotionally charged relationships with people. These interactions and emotions lie deep in our subconscious, and sometimes we don’t even realize the power they hold. I feel relationships with our selves and others continually need to be reinterpreted; my works struggle to illuminate these experiences.

 

My paintings take the figure out of the ordinary. Bodies appear to be normal, but on closer scrutiny become strange. Ultimately, I don’t want to estrange viewers, but to engage them more strongly through an emotional connection. Each viewer brings to the work her own memories and emotional states. I strive to make a connection with these individual characteristics not to make a statement of good or bad, right or wrong—but to reveal a vulnerability that makes us all human.

 

• Elena Johnson