Karyn Johnstone
About the artist
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karyn_johnstone/
Website: www.karynjohnstoneart.com
Karyn Johnstone is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores the contradictions, complexities, and conflicting views of womanhood fuelled by social pressures and the expectations to meet unrealistic beauty standards. Her work challenges societal stereotypes and draws from issues of motherhood, domesticity, sexuality, gender identity, and the lived experience.
Aesthetics are contextually superficial, and she draws on this to captivate the audience before confronting them with the sharpness of obscured realities lurking beneath the illusion. Hiding and revealing layers of sugar-coated playfulness, juxtaposed with dark and conflicting ideas, entices the viewer into a complex narrative that uncovers the cracks within. Exploring the masks and camouflage we invent to hide behind, while aiming to question the ‘male gaze’ and its perception of the female body by using materials traditionally associated with gender, thus challenging the norms of sexuality.