Non-representational abstract oil painting based on geometric shapes, surface texture and emotive colour. Contemporary painting using oil on canvas.

Non-representational abstract painting

In the tradition of 20th century non-objective abstract art (non-representational art) my paintings are based on the drama that arises when painterly elements meet and interact on the canvas.

Geometric shapes

My paintings are often based on very basic geometric shapes, particularly the square but also, sometimes, the triangle or the circle. I like to treat these shapes like organic elements as if they were in the process of disintegration, growth or perhaps vanishing from or entering the field of vision. Sometimes hard-edged shapes, as in geometric drawings alternate with more "organic" shapes.

Contemporary abstract oil painting

Today oil painting seems to be the favourite medium of fewer and few fewer artists. Many feel that fast drying acrylics better meets the requirements of an impatient contemporary artist. Personally I find that the versatile, slow-drying medium of abstract oil painting is tremendously well suited to explore and express the contemporary human predicament - a flux and a process rather than something static or unequivocal.

My abstract oil painting technique, which involves a sequence of creation, destruction and new creation, reflects my fascination with the fleeting concept of time and how traces left by the cycles of history can confer a sense of timelessness.

To me all aspects of abstract oil painting become means of making discoveries about the world and myself.

Eva Ryn Johannissen