Alan Johnston / Bio
The Scottish artist Alan Johnston, born in 1945, is known for his monumental wall drawings with pencil. He also makes black and white paintings with pencil or charcoal mixed with wax and acrylic on linen or wooden panels. Some of these small wooden panels he covers with a plexiglass box, which has a reflective effect. In his work he is trying to define space. Next to the Western modernist minimal art he is inspired by the Japanese tradition of experiencing space (ma) and subtle balance (wabi). Through his travelling in Japan he has acquainted a lot of Japanese painters and architects and other Western artists inspired by Japan. He started his exhibition career at Galerie Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf in 1973. Since then he exhibited internationally both in Japan, the United States and Europe on a regular base. His work has been collected internationally. In 2010 he had an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute on which occasion a catalogue has been published entitled Alan Johnston, Drawing a Shadow: no Object. In 2022 he exhibited at the Pier Art Centre in Stromness on Orkney.