April 9 - 12, 2026
Booth 229
Gretta Johnson
Nature of Things is pleased to present a solo presentation of paintings and works on paper by Gretta Johnson for the thirteenth edition of Expo Chicago.
Gretta Johnson’s paintings are luminous, vibrant, and full of movement and tension. The figures and symbols in her paintings appear in a state of transformation (birth, death, enlightenment), nestled into layered, impressionistic environments. Evocative of Jungian psychology and dream archetypes, her paintings embody the transcendent processes of painting itself.
The word “cartoon,” derived from the 17th-Century Italian word cartone, translates to “strong, heavy paper,” which was the material used for sketches. Johnson’s paintings are cartoonish, in both the classical and modern sense of the word: they have the implied lightness of a sketch, while also being humorous and whimsical. Three of the watercolor works on paper in this presentation are composed with frames like an abstract graphic novel, while the two grid paintings began as an underpainting, transforming comic book frames into pure color blocking, a matrix for the cartoon figures to emerge from or climb on top of.
Johnson comes from a background of 2D animation and graphic arts, exemplified by her outlined figures and bold colors. She draws visual inspiration or congruence from the Chicago Imagists, illuminated manuscripts, Shaker Gift drawings, and diagrammatic works of early graphic design. Johnson states: “I’m always thinking about the best painting I’ve ever seen and wanting to recreate that or wanting to make the thing that I want to see. That thing that I want to see is coming both from my dream space and my experience. It’s an amalgamation of all the things i’ve seen before and being in conversation with that lineage.”
Gretta Johnson is currently working on an original Tarot deck of 78 paintings which will be presented later this year through KAJE in Brooklyn, NY.
Gretta Johnson (b. 1985, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an interdisciplinary artist and graphic designer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BFA in animation from the Rhode Island School of Design, has participated in film festivals, published comic books (i.e. Star Fruit, 2013), and has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas over the past 10 years. For the past 13 years, she has been the artist-in-chief for Grimm Artisanal Ales, producing all the artwork for the award-winning brewery, based in Brooklyn, New York. On the rooftop at Grimm, she curates a monthly performance series called Exquisite Corp.