Working with stain, layered paint, and gestural mark-making, Vashti embraces uncertainty in the studio, allowing materials to respond and evolve on the surface. Central to this approach is what she describes as “the wild intelligence of matter”: the idea that the physical materials of painting - pigment, drips, stains, and layered surfaces - are not passive, but active participants in the work. Paint bleeds, pools, and settles unpredictably; gravity, breath, and accumulation shape the image as much as the artist’s hand. Each painting is a quiet portal and a living field where control loosens and raw matter begins to speak. Together, the works hold wildness and stillness in balance, with image, material, and process remaining inseparable throughout the act of painting.
Vashti Johnstone; Feral Grace
Review by Pip Goldsbury
Vashti Johnstone’s latest exhibition is a profound statement. Spiritually rich, Feral Grace bares the trademarks of Vashti’s seeping painterly style. Animated layers of riotous colour absorb the viewer, while Vashti’s distinctive lettering and dissolving lines are immediately recognisable. However, Feral Grace hits deeper than previous works: a primal experience, a spiritual veneration of nature, a multi-faceted exploration of an entrenched wildness.
A series of eleven large-scale works, Feral Grace is present and grounded, yet it takes the viewer on a journey of exploration. There’s an exhilarating madness and an uplifting chaos as colour chases light across the canvas. But this is coupled with an innate calmness, a portal to pause, breathe and reconnect.
A spiritual journey, the series is heavy with symbolism, from Vashti’s dense application of earth tones, representative of compassion, nurturing and wisdom, to feminine deities: sacred, intuitive and caring. Soaring birds become a metaphor for the connection between the earthly and the divine, while domesticated animals offer a glimpse into a world of peace and prosperity.
It’s Vashti’s realm, her inner being surging into her paintings, an otherworldly portal of transition, freedom and intuition, a way
being, and a place where the untamed and the sacred meet.
