Swedish painter Susanne Johansson, in her poetic voice, both in paint and with words, urges the viewer to find the stillness to enter this subconscious world of nature, where we are mere visitors in the realm of animals, insects, and trees. "I think paintings are a bit more quiet. You can walk in. They're not demanding that you listen. You can fill in your own story. It's a bit like a mirror in a way. If it works, that is…" Johansson's work holds a mirror up to ourselves as viewers, circumventing our conscious reality and replacing each of us as temporal beings in nature. Each painting feels like a different dreamscape one can enter, exist within, and experience individually.
The repeated theme of a solitary figure immersed -engulfed, even-in a woodland places Johansson apart from the human-centered landscape one finds throughout art history (e.g. Caspar David Friedrich, Edward Hopper, Camille Corot). That feeling of a figure hidden, nearly imperceptible but not quite one with the forest, references fond memories from the artist's childhood in a rural community in northern Sweden. Growing up spending time in the woods was an experience of total freedom. Hunting with her father or exploring with her brother and sister, "I was never scared," she says, of the wild animals in the landscape. "Yet somehow, we always felt as though we were visitors in someone else's space. Like when we were walking in the forest picking berries, and the great grey owl came. You know, don't come too close." She explains further, "The landscape wasn't mine. The land belonged to the red robin in the tree. It's almost a celebration of that feeling of being close to something but not." Johansson's landscape is one you may enter, and explore, but perhaps not fully embody.
Susanne Johansson was born 1969 in Stråkanäs in the north of Sweden and now lives in Uppsala, Sweden. She was educated at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm (1992-1997). Selected exhibitions include: Signs of Time, Turn Gallery, in the Parlour room, New York, USA (2022), Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2022, 2015, 2012, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2002 & 1999), Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden (2018), Trafo Kunsthal, Norway (2018), Galleri Ping-Pong, Malmö, Sweden (2018), Fred, London, UK (2010), Konsthallen/Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden (2007), Feigen Contemporary New York, US (2006), Galeria Monica De Cardenas, Milano, Italy (2005), and Prague Biennale 2, Czech Republic (2005).