Andrew Johnson Artists Biography

Andrew Johnson was born (1965) in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, and completed his secondary education in 1981 at Cyfarthfa High School. He returned to full time education in 1987 and studied a Foundation Course in Art and Design at Newport College of Art, South Wales, after which he completed a B.F.A. (Hons) and M.F.A. at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Scotland, where he lived until 1994.

During his college years, his professional art practice was concerned with the socio-political turmoil of the declining mining industry, and he spent four years working photographically alongside the miners of Taff Merthyr Colliery, South Wales, until its closure in 1993. He worked empathically with the miners and produced a large body of photographic work which was exhibited nationally.

Back in Scotland, he co-ordinated a programme of workshops in a Young Offenders Institution, an Alcoholics Rehabilitation Unit, and was commissioned to undertake a project in a new architectural model of a residential home for the elderly. Empathy and humanity became a major foundation of his photographic practice.

Wales became his home again in the mid 1990's and photography, painting, collage, regular exhibitions, and an artist in residence programme, helped further his creative practice. He subsidised his work through part-time teaching.

In 1996 he spent fourteen months travelling Central America which was a very grounding experience and highly influential to him. Using a small, unobtrusive camera he recorded a panopoly of everyday experiences and generated a new body of work.

On his return to Wales in late 1997, he was commissioned to creatively promote a new initiative that was set up to help local people experience outdoor pursuits and orienteering skills, and was given free artistic licence to develop the project using photography. He also set up a a dynamic series of workshops to explore Youth Culture and Social Identity, at different Youth Clubs in the South Wales area. In 1998 he had a long struggle with personal trauma after a near fatal motorcycle accident which side-shifted his creative practice for a number of years, and opened a whole new chapter/experience of life.

Moving to Ireland in 2002, he established himself as a core member of a prominent artists' collective and worked with painting, photography, multimedia video works, and collaboration was an important part of his art practice. He set up a successful Live Art, Music and Multimedia Event to great acclaim, and won funding from Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture.

He now lives in South Wales working with painting, video work and photography. He teaches part time in a college which is is a subsidary of the University of Glamorgan and continues to run community art workshops.

Artists Statement

Making art is a way of life that offers profound insight, balance and meaning. Art is challenging and engaging. It's an intimate expression of the human condition that acts as a portal into the minutiae of life's mechanics: visual, emotional, cerebral and spiritual experiences that fill our lives with meaning. Important points of embarkation, discovery and understanding.

Art takes us on a journey of personal learning and facilitates an intimate process of communication with self and the world we build around us. Art fabricates the creative story of my life and is something that becomes personal myth, bringing ephemeral moments of private meaning into being. Art in people's consciousness is all things to all people and is a profound reflection of man's relationship with life and human expression.