Monday Muse: Ynez Johnston

I was introduced to the work of Ynez Johnston on a trip to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2021. Her work is modernist, abstract, and often delves into a narrative of imaginative lands and creatures. Sometimes her work utilizes collage, which obviously appeals to me.

What I love about her work is the dance between modernism and primitivism. There is a sense that these pieces could have been made a very long time ago, by an ancient civilization, or very far into the future. A staggering amount of detail engages you as you make sense of the shapes coalescing into a scene. The works feel fun and childlike but also epic, like legends or myths. The method in which she applies pigment creates these layers and washes of color, almost like a batik. I love how she uses a resist method to preserve the white outlines of her work for a figure-ground reversal.

In the 1960s she began working with lithography to print most of her compositions which added another layer of ephemerality to her work, as lithography often does. She also worked in ceramic, creating bowls and other useful objects with her signature primitivist motifs.

I especially love what I call the “cityscapes” by Ynez Johnston although I’m not quite sure that’s what they are. To me, they convey a sense of a bustling metropolis with many people going about their daily activities. Again they seem simultaneously prehistoric and futuristic. The white outlines and an energy to the work and a lightness. The colors and shapes interplay excitingly across the canvas. One sees themselves getting lost there. Her work is fun and childlike and a great example of the modernist maximalist ethos. Too often we think of stark works as exemplary of modernism but I love the artists that couldn’t resist to add more, because that is an impulse I also share.