New Ancient II

She looks out from the canvas the way someone looks out from behind glass — fully present, fully aware, and yet held apart by something layered between herself and the world. Kim Johnson has always been drawn to eyes: what they hold, what they witness, what they refuse to let go. In this portrait, she gives us two eyes that do not match — one blue, one amber — because the self is never a single, unified thing. We are always more than one version of ourselves at once. The face is divided by diagonal lines that cut across the surface like light through a lattice, or like the seams in a life that's been repaired and repaired again. On either side, color does its own kind of speaking: turquoise and sea-green on one half, warm saffron and burnt orange on the other — cool and warm, interior and exterior, hidden and revealed. Floral motifs pressed into the skin like henna or memory, and behind the figure, a field of gestural marks and stenciled patterns that hum with the visual energy of the city Johnson has always called home. This is a painting about the space between who we are and who we show the world — about veiling and unveiling, about identity as something constructed, adorned, and constantly in motion. Johnson doesn't resolve that tension. She holds it open, invites you into it, and lets you find yourself somewhere inside the looking.