I’m Ella Johnston.
Rooted in drawing, my practice is an ongoing investigation into mark-making, gesture, and the calligraphic line; into the ways meaning is constructed, dissolved, or withheld through the act of inscription. I am drawn to the slippage between text and image, to nostalgia and homesickness, and to the workings of memory. Recent works explore the idea of the palimpsest: the writing and overwriting of histories, and the residue that remains.
Influenced by my working-class East End and Irish heritage, and by growing up within London’s immigrant diaspora. Now living in Essex, I carry forward a visual language shaped by layered cultures and contested narratives across painting, drawing, print, and sculptural forms.
My experience as a journalist and marketer has sharpened my interest in truth, myth-making, representation, and miscommunication. The gestural layers of paint and ink, the distortion of fabric and folded paper, echo the continual rewriting of narrative; the invention of slogans and the strategic retelling of stories. Surfaces become sites of revision and resistance.
I imagine my paintings as spaces bearing the scars of human occupation; once inhabited by conversation and industry, now deserted and slowly reclaimed by elemental forces. Land surrenders to vegetation, weather, and time; rusted architectures dissolve into moss, pools, soil, and mist; infrastructures sag into wetlands. These works propose a speculative archaeology, objects that feel both unearthed and prematurely ancient. They envision a future in which today’s emergency infrastructures have become sacred debris, absorbed into ecological systems and folded into folk memory.
Alongside my studio practice, I am co-founder and creative director of Dunlin Press, a small independent publisher and art project, where I design the books and cover artwork for each publication.
I am an occasional illustrator for St Martin’s Press, New York, and am regularly commissioned as a feature and cover artist for a variety of print magazines and journals.
I trained in art at Chelsea College of Art and in history of art at the University of Essex. I am a member of The Other MA (TOMA) 24-26 cohort and Turps Banana CC 25/26.
CONTACT ME
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