ABOUT ME •
ABOUT ME •
ABOUT ME •
Michelle Johnston is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice merges painting, collage, and abstraction into richly layered visual narratives. Drawing from cultural memory, personal symbolism, and historical fragments, her work blends the tactile with the fantastical—creating surreal, emotionally charged spaces where movement, myth, and identity intersect. Her use of collage is narrative and subversively precise, building stories from scraps, gestures, and textures that speak to vulnerability, power, and transformation.
Johnston’s visual language is unapologetically hybrid: painterly yet sculptural, playful yet profound. Faceless figures in motion drift through symbolic landscapes built from vintage imagery, gold leaf, and expressive mark-making. In this world of fragmented memory and layered meaning, Johnston invites viewers not only to see, but to reconstruct—piecing together what has been broken, concealed, or left behind.
In Johnston’s work, nothing is static: images repeat like echoes, architecture becomes memory, and the city itself turns into a palimpsest of resistance, longing, and transformation. She lives and works in Manhattan Beach, California, where she continues to blur the boundaries between fine art and visual anthropology.
Michelle Johnston is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice merges painting, collage, and abstraction into richly layered visual narratives. Drawing from cultural memory, personal symbolism, and historical fragments, her work blends the tactile with the fantastical—creating surreal, emotionally charged spaces where movement, myth, and identity intersect. Her use of collage is narrative and subversively precise, building stories from scraps, gestures, and textures that speak to vulnerability, power, and transformation.
Johnston’s visual language is unapologetically hybrid: painterly yet sculptural, playful yet profound. Faceless figures in motion drift through symbolic landscapes built from vintage imagery, gold leaf, and expressive mark-making. In this world of fragmented memory and layered meaning, Johnston invites viewers not only to see, but to reconstruct—piecing together what has been broken, concealed, or left behind.
In Johnston’s work, nothing is static: images repeat like echoes, architecture becomes memory, and the city itself turns into a palimpsest of resistance, longing, and transformation. She lives and works in Manhattan Beach, California, where she continues to blur the boundaries between fine art and visual anthropology.
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