Tara Johns is a painter and photographer, living in Sydney, Australia.

After studying photography at Sydney Technical College and working as a photojournalist in Sydney for News Ltd publications and in Ho Chi Min City, Tara completed a degree in Visual Art through Curtin University, and later a Graduate Diploma of Visual Art Education at ACU.

Tara’s transition from a commercial photographer to art photographer and painter and her experience living and working in Sydney’s diverse and industrial inner west, is reflected in her work, which boldly projects the natural into the urban.

With a heightened perception of the sensory, drawn from her own journey through illness, Tara’s works focus on light, colour and texture, creating illusions of depth and dimension and layering, blending and distorting shape. She reveals our environment in fresh and unexpected ways. 

Her work is influenced by the ideas and work of Henri Lefebre in rhythmanalysis where rhythms in our everyday life, in our movements through space and our interactions with objects in space are explored.

“The rhythmanalysist is capable of listening to a house, a street, a town as one listens to a symphony, an opera.”   Henri Lefebvre,

She is also inspired by the work of James Turrell and his interest in human perception. The light and space art movement and abstract expressionism.  

“It is about your seeing, like the wordless thought that comes from looking into a fire." James Turrell

Tara’s work has been exhibited in both Sydney and Melbourne and as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. She was a finalist in the Art and About Australian Life exhibition.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work captures a rare personal and hidden experience of heighten connection with the sensory world through photography, paint and texture.The art is large and layered. Paint and texture build one on top of the other and move across multiple levels. Cycles and patterns intersect and overlap. Close up the layers and strokes in my work might appear chaotic, but from a distance they work together to reveal outlines of almost recognisable shapes and places. Shifting light, colours blending, distorted shape, at once recognisable yet veiled.

Art lets me tell a story. My works are never silent or still. They pulsate life, sometimes hidden from view, but ever present.