Ink and Wire - Charlotte Johnston and Rosie Brown

About

Charlotte Johnston is a Fine Art Painting Graduate from Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University and has completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Drawing at the Royal Drawing School in 2017. During study on the Drawing Year in London, Johnston had the opportunity to draw frequently in large public museums and galleries across the city; the National Gallery, the British Museum, the V&A and Whitechapel Gallery where she was also a drawing tutor, working with young people between the ages of 10- 18 years old. She has exhibited work at Christie’s, London and Compass Gallery, Glasgow and she specialises in observational drawings of nature and landscapes. Charlotte’s work features in private collections internationally, including H.R.H the Prince of Wales. In more recent postgraduate study, she graduated from studying Conservation of Fine Art MA, specialising in Easel Painting as a Plowden Trust Scholar and achieving a distinction in her thesis on Dammar Resin’s origin, use and value within the context of nineteenth- century of Art Material Trade.

Previously, subtropical botanical gardens and the west coast in Scotland have provided sources for her to work from where she uses drawing as a form of research to investigate the physical rhythms and structures in nature. During 2020 she was able to access through daily video calls, imagery of l’île de la Reunion, which influenced Johnston’s studio process where she took condensed versions of landscape, and further explored them in the studio in a cyclical group of works. These large drawings and paintings aim to give the viewer an immersive, sensual experience. Johnston’s paintings are derived from observational drawings and are a re-ordering of her experiences using a more abstract language of mark making.

Rosie Brown’s wire creations are inspired by British wildlife, highlighting its delicate fragility by twisting fine wire into the shapes and shadows of a world that constantly surprises but we only really see glimpses of. Brown hopes to draw attention to an important but often ignored subject matter.

She ‘draws’ her chosen subject, the delicate outlines pencilled with a fine grey line, the wire emanating a presence of strength, adaptability yet almost invisible. Rosie‘s wirework enhances and brings out the beauty and wonder of our wildlife.

Charlotte and Rosie’s bold and captivating artworks are the fourth of Darl-e and the Bear's 'Open Call' exhibitions showing at our Bear Den Art Lounge.