Gavin Johnson

Gavin Johnson was born in the Bronx, New York in 1982, was raised in London and now works from his studio in Brixton, London.

Gavin has come from an artistic background and now that his career as a champion javelin athlete is coming to a close has started to focus on art combining his passion for movement in sports, psychology, and visual arts.

He believes the greatest gift bestowed upon us is the ability to create and that we are all artists in our way, expressing ourselves in different formats.

Gavin has expanded his knowledge of abstract art by studying the works of Hilma Af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky the founders of abstract art and its development to the post-modern era of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Enthralled by their beliefs and expression through art, they conveyed the intangibles through colour and what appeared to be at first arbitrary patterns. It was liberating for Gavin and challenging to express movement, feelings, emotions and moods using colours, forms and texture.

Gavin relishes the opportunity to express himself and simply be, free from regulation and order.

His current work explores the themes of movement, love, growth, and development in its many forms through abstract shapes and patterns, blending colours that irrevocably speak to us on an existential level. He challenges himself to convey the link between us and the intangible feeling we all have, drawing influences from his life experiences, psychological studies, tribal patterns, and colours.

Gavin feels that this art form and the way the colours blend perfectly depict the relative state we are all in, showing that we are made up of different feelings and emotions, as we move through life. The movement of the paint jumps off the canvas giving it a real injection of life that we all can relate to.

Gavin relishes finding novel and creative ways to show the intangible things that contribute to the strong bonds we create with each other.