Johnny Izatt-Lowry adds an uncertain tone to familiar objects in his dry pigment paintings

What’s striking about Johnny Izatt-Lowry’s dry pigment paintings is that the hazy forms evoke an acute sense of unease, as if the micro-rubble is shifting on the stretched crepe fabric like wind-struck dust on Mars. “The haziness and depth of the process add to the dreamlike uncertainty in the images,” Johnny details, “which feel like they may dissolve if interrogated too closely.” Each delicate image is the result of a very involved process starting, like many do, on our beloved internet.

“My works look at the world from a place of remove,” the London-based artist tells It’s Nice That. For Johnny, the task is to distance everyday objects from their original contexts. “They become memories or dreams of their real-world counterparts,” he says. Plucked from the internet, toyed with and rearranged, they take on an increasingly “mischievous and at times uncertain tone” the deeper they go. Filtering through inspiration from Dutch still flower paintings and recent examples of everyday uncanny from artists like Dominico Gnoli and Liu ye, by the time they reach the canvas these forms are visually recognisable but also a touch unfamiliar.