Candice Johnson - A Painter On Tour November 28, 2008

Palm Springs Thanksgiving Weekend Desert Art Festival

Candice Johnson, a Painter on Tour

Exhibition at the Palm Springs Desert Art Festival, November 28th-30th, 10AM-4PM, Frances Stevens 538 N Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92262

Interior Designer in California, previous buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and European marketing consultant for Danskin, Candice Johnson began studying and working as a Fine Artist in 1992 when she moved to Paris. She remained for eleven years absorbing the soul of the City of Lights.
After painting still lifes and nudes she decided in 1997 to focus on one tributary searching for the source: The Tete. In French the Tete signifies both the head and the visage. Through color, texture and gestural paint strokes she captures the emotions that linger under the surface. Our fragility, strength, tenderness, hopes and fears. Her Tetes are always presented in a square format. As in a Buddhist Mandala the square represents the material space with paths to exit at the four corners while the Tete as the circle or soul remains the timeless center.
She relocated to California in 2003 to be an American in America, though she is still in touch with the Paris of her dreams and imagination. Candice continues to paint Tetes, below the Hollywood Sign where she lives in a historical and magical Hollywood Hills home that she has renovated. The Tetes remain familiar but somewhat foreign perhaps they are the invisible but past residents of Menilmontant, Belleville and Pere Lachaise of Paris or perhaps they are something else entirely.
Candice Johnson is a listed artist as her art has been sold at the prestigious Parisian auction house of Hotel Drouot for a semi annually auction of Emerging Contemporary French Artists since 2001. Her next auction will be in April 2009. She has had over 40 exhibitions in France and is the collections of many notable European Art Collectors.
Her work is uncommonly contemporary but is stamped with artistic traditions. Her energy and force could be compared to Expressionism, her color usage to the Fauvists. Her deformations of the Tete could be described as Picassoesque. Her ability to dig deep and release the child archetype when she paints can be viewed in the naïve Art Brut style of Jean Dubuffet. Her usage of taking a single subject and multiplying it to make an expanded story can be found in Pop Art. How ever you define or interpret her work it is unique, compelling and touching and truly her own.

Website www.candicejohnson.com Gallery www.candicejohnson.etsy.com
Cell: 323 251-2737 Email: [email protected]

Los Angeles, November 18, 2008