Emerging Artist Award 2021
Why Should I Cry for You
Why Should I Cry for You
75cm by 60cm (unframed)
Oil and gold leaf on canvas
Influenced by iconography, this painting tells a story of grief and self-acceptance. The text, "One day at a time seems like a good idea. Until it's not," is from a personal letter that described personal loss during a difficult time. This painting, like many of my works, looks like a self portrait. These self portraits are meant less as physical representations of myself, and more as symbolic, emotional ones. In short, I paint my feelings. In these icon-based works, the iconography is spiritual, rather than religious. I use symbolism to tell an inner story - my own human experience becomes an expression of a wider human condition.
Johanna McWeeney
Johanna McWeeney is a self-taught artist working in oils and living in Devon, UK. She paints intuitively, focusing on symbolism, childish/childlike expression and uses self-portraiture to express and process common human emotions. Painting becomes an almost spiritual path, or at least a retrospective map of the journey.
Johanna explores ideas of potential, creative expression and colour. Painting becomes a cathartic and complimentary opposite to the exacting demands of perfectionism. In some ways, while the work may sometimes come from an emotion that is not particularly happy, it is designed to transmute that into something beautiful.
The underlying motivation behind the work is to create a more beautiful world.