Johanna Carrington
Artist Johanna Carrington says, “When we traded our comfortable suburban life for a small rural town on the Chesapeake, I had no idea how much I would cherish the distant horizon, or how it would affect me. Seeing the unobstructed views everyday was liberating, and it brought luxurious peace. I craved it more and more whenever we were back in the city.”
And just as this move was a watershed moment in her family’s life that brought them closer and encouraged them to stretch and grow, this move also propelled Carrington’s art forward.
She developed a confidence and discipline to paint by herself more than ever before. She adopted a go-for-it attitude and decided not to worry about what everyone else wanted her to paint. Carrington springboarded from her favorite things—marshes, blue and white canton china, and her garden. This incongruous mixture of things contained meaning and connections to her past that makes her paintings authentic.
It was while studying interior design and architectural history, that a teacher introduced Carrington to painting. She has worked in historic rehab, commercial interior design and ran her own floral business before making the leap into painting full time. You can see these elements in her work like in her night florals. “These paintings began with the birds that spilled a lot of seed from the feeder, and volunteer poppies emerged amongst the boxwood,” says Carrington. “One night after a rainstorm there were fantastic reflections from the moonlight and I thought it would be whimsical and bright painting.”