Mary-Anne Johnston

Three Muses (detail), 2021
acrylic on canvas

About the artist:

Mary-Anne Johnston grew up on the border of urban Peterborough and farm country. Her formal education included undergraduate degrees in English Literature and (later) Classical Literature from Trent University, followed by travel and adventures which included years of sailing, mainly in the Hawaiian islands.

Johnston became involved in jewelry making, which led to representations in galleries across Canada and shows, including One-of-a-Kind (Toronto).

A love of myth and story, as well as a fascination with the complexity of the human psyche, led Mary-Anne to the study of depth psychology at C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich where she graduated as a Jungian analyst.

Currently Mary-Anne is fully engaged in art making. Recently, she developed skills in drawing and painting at the Haliburton School of the Arts. Workshops with Brian Atyeo and Rowena Dykins influenced the direction of Mary-Anne’s art, especially to find her groove in the place between abstraction and literal representation.

The themes of her life which flow through her art include: the human relationship with animals (the comedic and tragic), the Earth, the mystery and challenges inherent in that ‘otherness,’ and the deep poetic rivers that renew us as humans — all of these situations enter Johnston’s art. 

For Mary-Anne, alongside the deep despair concerning this Climate Crisis, always runs a love and playfulness and gratitude for being alive with such beauty and intelligence in the non-human world.