Bio
Marley Johnson is a Canadian based artist focused primarily on painting and material practice. He completed his M.F.A in Painting and Drawing at Concordia University 2021, most recently participating in the Banff A.I.R (spring) 2024. In Marley’s practice, there is an instinctual desire to capture and subvert the material world. The whimsical and fleeting pass through each piece, often reflecting on the waste and displacement of work produced by globalization.
Throughout his material practice the natural and synthetic are strong visual indicators, as seen in the work (Bling Bling from Lost and Found), a piece of drift wood covered in rhinestone. Within the painting (Chicken Bone from The future is Bright), Marley uses pieces of denim and canvas dyed with iron extracted from railway spikes, arranged into a gridded composition, playing with representations of labour and value.