REILEY JOHNSON

ballpoint pen and acrylic gouache, 2025

Ballpoint pen, ink, gouache, and embroidery on vintage textile, 8x11in, 2025

Things that open old wounds, stuck and forever bleeding inside of you. They cannot be taken out. The muscle has grown back around them - they are integral to the environment, to the structure of the space - load bearing. Everything will collapse without them.

Ballpoint pen and embroidery on vintage doily, 4x7in, 2025

Something wicked this way comes. Will it wound? Will it make you bleed again?

Pen, ink, and gouache on vintage fabric, 12x38in, 2025

Weeping at the loss of the sun. Morning glories bloom and fade in the course of the day. Look to the sun to guide you home.

scratchboard, 2025

ballpoint pen on cloth, 2023

ballpoint pen on cloth, 2023

the eye - behold the myth of yourself

the wound - it all comes back to blood

life - a human soul, come back

fortune - the turn of the tides

the star - the shape of the universe

the egg - form to the formless


pen and gouache on BFK, 2023

graphite on paper, 2023

Shed your body and your soul to become something else. Peel away layers, until there are only bones. Object into nothing.

ink wash, pen, and gouache, 2021

ink wash and pen, 13x21, 2021

pen and ink, 2022

Based on an excerpt from "WHY ARE YOU HAUNTED? A survey" poem by Joan Tierney

ink wash, graphite, ballpoint pen, 2020

Clay board, pen and ink, graphite, procreate, 2020

graphite and water on BFK, 2020

graphite on BFK, 2020

First of two pieces in a series based on recurring nightmares. Fear of observation and paranoia - dreams of failing and falling and being watched in the dark.

graphite on BFK, 2020

Second of two pieces in a series based on recurring nightmares. Fear of being hunted and entangled - when something is wearing the wrong skin, and being caught in a trap.