Paul Johnson – Happiest in My Workroom

FOBA 2021 Challenge Book

Technique and materials used:

This is a two-fold pop-up panorama inspired by Lothar Meggendorfer’s International Circus. Dovetail joints join all the individual units so the whole structure can be taken to pieces. It is made with Saunders Waterford watercolour paper dyed with industrial textile dyes with additional pen and brushwork. 

Opening instructions: Open the top panel and then the right panel. The layers of furniture should drop down on opening, but if the model has been closed for some time you might need to help with this. Ease forwards the garden behind the window.  Reverse the above to close down flat again.

About the work:

I spend most of my life in my workroom making art. What else is there to do? Where else is there to go? The world outside my room seems such an anti climax to the one inside it. All my life as a child and adult the room that holds my paints, pens, and brushes is where my heart is.

The right panel of Happiest In My Workroom shows my worktable and shelves containing my work, tools, materials, and a lifetime’s collected bits and pieces. On the left panel is my beloved piano that I play daily, and in the middle is the French window that leads out to a secluded garden surrounded by trees. The fourth invisible wall is where the door is – the least used part of the room.

www.bookart.co.uk