Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of new paintings by Erick Johnson titled Continuum. This is his third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Johnson’s abstract paintings explore the synergy between color and form. Irregular shapes stack and slide together, building walls of reverberating color. The elements touch occasionally, but most are separated by narrow white passages that create the illusion of forms suspended in space.

Johnson uses handmade tools to pull paint across the surface in layered passes. Small interruptions in the lines remain as evidence of the process. Opaque and translucent bands of color play against each other, creating rhythm and movement. Fluctuating stripes build vibrant, shifting polygons, while fuzzy edges bleed into the surrounding white. Some settle into place like masonry; others teeter on their neighbors.

The compositions feel active rather than fixed. The shapes become worlds of their own, grazing one another and pressing against the picture’s edge. They are both grounded and moving - structured geometry animated by color. To Johnson the shapes “often straddle the line between object and opening, construction and evolution.”