Joanna
McCormick

Working across a variety of media I experiment with different genres. The ideal is for my work to be displayed as an installation, bringing different formats together to create cohesion. Engaging in creative play to explore free expression, I believe in the power of art to enhance our spiritual and physical wellbeing.

Painting for me is a visceral and physical process. I get lost in the creative flow and daydreaming. I use essential oils of rose and lavender mixed with lindseed oil to surround myself with wondrous smells while I'm working, and I never use harsh solvents. Ideas and images suggest themselves through pareidolia - seeing shapes in clouds - ideas and shapes appear in the layers of brushstrokes that I've created. When painting in oils I like to use a variety of textures with flat planes of smooth paint rendered with large brushes and fine lines drawn on top with a tiny brush. I use blending with wet into wet, wet on dry, scumbling and impasto. Sometimes working intuitively and sometimes to a plan, always inspired by an archive of physical ephemera, scrap books and sketch book drawings and tracings collected over many years.

When working in watercolour I play with the flow of the paint, with mixed media, adding wax resist with oil pastel, blurring or emphasising line with watercolour pencil and soft pastel, watersoluble graphite and pen and ink. I add salt and granulation medium for texture, enjoying the unpredictable nature of the medium and its expressive ebb.

My drawing practice is broader. When working from observation I become fascinated with movement and working quickly in layers to push through from gestural drawing into abstraction, using methods such as blind contour drawing to enhance this effect. I also work intuitively from my archives, building puzzling narratives with themes and motifs that repeat across the wide range of my work as a whole. At times the message is very clear, at others elusive.

Inspiration is captured from the world around me - domestic architecture, politics, history, pop culture, music, museum collections, community engagement and reminsicence, as well as snapshots from everyday life - a dog barking, a child at the window, fairground lights in the twilight, screenshots of a particularly interesting cinematic moment from films or TV series. My work is surrealist psychedelic Victoriana. Research around colour theory leads to vibrancy and movement. My ADHD brain is always busy and inspired by broad concepts as well as minutiae and detail, unless hyperfocussed on the creative work in hand.

My 3D work is mostly born from live art interactions that I devise. Collaboration is at the heart of this work, both with the public, art organisations and other artists. I develop ongoing, spontaneous and constantly evolving art experiences. I aim to create something beautiful, humorous, inspiring. Viewers are encouraged to forget themselves, to engage in play, to interact with artworks and immerse themselves in the creative process. This experience is designed to take place, as Huizigna wrote, within “...the realm of dream, enchantment, ecstasy and laughter.”