About Artist

Kirsten Johnson was born on last day of the summer of love to two ex-pat American professors who couldn't have been less hippy. In the time worn tradition of becoming one's parents her work is split between exploring large ideas like her philosopher father but from a very personal and emotionally real position like her psychiatrist nursing prof mom. Her desire to be both an artist and a performer dates back to the age of 5. Today, Kirsten Johnson is a visual artist / performer who makes small films.

She began studying both art and performance at a very young age and assumed that one would eventually win out. It has yet to do so. Before leaving her teens she started working as a professional portraitist as well as an actor appearing in DNA Theatre's extremely experimental works (she was Ophelia in an 8-hour version of Hamlet) as well as the infamous Centre Stage production of Spring Awakening in Toronto.

As a painter, her work work appears in private and public collections all over North America, Europe, Australia and Japan. Her work often involves a fusing of her visual work with her strong background in performance. Her work last appeared publicly at Toronto's KWT Contemporary with Prom Storm and before that in the inaugural show at Art X Life, in Tokyo, Japan.

Her work appears in Leaving Metropolis, a feature film by Brad Fraser and in Stan Rogal's book of short stories, What Passes for Love and she's recently completed a painting for the cover of her father (Philosophy Professor, David Martel Johnson)'s book, How History Made the Mind, published by Chicago's Open Court Books.

Performance-wise she has appeared in such films as Cronenberg's eXistenZ, Jeremy Podeswa's Eclipse, and "virtually" by webcam at the Royal Alex as a part of Theatre Gargantua's "Edentity". Most recently she appeared in Daniel MacIvor's "the 83rd".