Artist Biography – Josephine Johnson

Based in Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia, Josephine Johnson is a painter and sculptor whose practice engages deeply with the natural environment. Her work explores the sublime aesthetic experiences found in nature—those moments of awe, fragility, and wonder that reveal our interconnectedness with the living world.

At times, Josephine’s practice takes a large-scale, abstract form, responding to landscape through gestural mark-making and material experimentation. These works convey the sensory immersion and reverence she feels for wild and untamed places. At other times, her work becomes intimate and representational, capturing the smaller marvels of nature—birds, flowers, lichen, and other quiet forms of life that invite close attention.

Working primarily in oil paint on materials such as timber and copper, Josephine’s choice of surfaces reflects her ongoing interest in the tactile and the transformative. The use of copper and other precious metals recalls her long career in the jewellery industry, materially reinforcing a recurring theme in her work: the preciousness of the natural world. For Josephine, artmaking is an act of reverence—a means of honouring the small wonders of nature and the restoration found in wild places.

Josephine’s work is represented in private collections across Australia, Singapore, the United States and Scotland. An active and passionate member of the arts community, she serves as Chair of Regional Arts WA, advocating for the visibility and vitality of regional arts practice.

She achieved a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Fine Art Distinction) from Curtin University (2025), and also holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Western Australia (1989). Prior to committing to a full time art practice Josephine held senior positions within the international corporate, mining, jewellery and diamond industries.

Inspiration for Josephine’s practice comes from a constellation of influences and affections: birds, the bush, copper, flowers, lichen, cliffs (terrifying), clouds, and seaweed; artists such as Giacometti, Antony Gormley, Louise Bourgeois, and Tracey Emin; thinkers like Donna Haraway; the writings of ee cummings; and the music of Amy Winehouse and David Bowie. She also finds joy in travel, goats (hilarious), gingko leaves, Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, ultramarine blue, nickel azo yellow, dusky pinks and the company of family and friends.