Honeysuckle (looking right) with Two Rosehips
Honeysuckle (looking right) with Two Rosehips depicts two plants against a dark background, contained within a small fragment of paper. The honeysuckle is painted a dark magenta, whilst the two rosehip heads are fiery orange. As the title suggests, the honeysuckle gazes right across the canvas, as if animated by looking. In contrast, the rosehip droops in the corner but attracts our attention with its bright colour.
Produced a year before her death, Honeysuckle (looking right) with Two Rosehips is the last work by Johnson in the Collection. Her rheumatoid arthritis had rapidly evolved by the late 1990s and early 2000s and she found it hard to undertake small tasks, such as preparing small surfaces to create work with. For the final two years of her life she produced a succession of small but brightly coloured watercolours set against a dark background, such as this one. Assistants were employed by Johnson to provide fragments of paper that were torn (not cut) to retain their rough edges, which we can see in this particular work.
With thanks to Rachel Boyd for informing this text through her paper delivered at ‘The Women’s Art Collection: Artworks and Artists in Context’ conference in March 2024.
