Joanna McFarland is a Canadian non-objective painter. She is all about colour, shape, form and movement. She paints feelings, moods, sensations, mind’s eye things. Her work expresses an attitude, an opinion, an idea. She knows her work is love-it-or-hate-it work. She does not mind. All she asks is that you let yourself feel her work, respond to it.
PERSIAN GARDEN
Joanna responds to her world through colour, texture and the feel of the paint on canvas or stone paper. She offers her personal answer to the simple questions she is always asking herself: “What do I see? What do I feel?”
Sometimes music triggers a painterly reaction in her. You could say that she ‘hears’ colour. The musical tones set the colour tones, the ‘palate’. They are not always colours she would choose consciously, but she says she follows, responds, to the music and what happens on the canvas often surprises her.
Joanna has studied art for a long time – colour theory, composition and technique. She has studied many forms of art in galleries and museums spending her time observing how each artist crafted their work.
She practices her craft every day and artfully she waits for the moment. When the moment comes, she says she has learned to trust her skill, knowledge and experience and to step out of her own way and let the paintings emerge.
GLACIER
For a show called ‘Creative Art in the Studio’ at Gairloch Gardens in Oakville, Ontario, Joanna received the brief to use a colour theme of whites and greys. She says those colours provoked a kind of arctic feel in her which came out in her work.
She says, “A piece of art isn't always about the artist. When the work is done, it’s done. It takes on a life of its own – a life given by the viewer. When I am finished, it’s your turn. Your turn to respond to the feeling I’ve captured in my work. Love it or hate it. I don’t mind. All I ask is that you let yourself feel it.”
All Joanna’s paintings are for sale. Visit her in her Garden Gallery & Studio, 233 Main Street, Wellington, Ontario, K0K 3L0
