‘I hated painting politely.’ It is a fitting introduction to the work of Joanna Gilbert, a London-based abstract expressionist whose paintings are driven by instinct, movement and an unapologetic love of colour. Working on an expansive scale, Gilbert approaches the canvas with physical energy and an openness to whatever unfolds, allowing paint, pigment and gesture to lead her towards unexpected outcomes.
Yet beneath the expressive surfaces lies a deeply personal story. Painting became a means of rediscovering her identity during a period of profound change, a journey that led her to complete an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts and develop a practice rooted in resilience, freedom and self-discovery. Her collections, from Limitless and Freedom to Joy and Flow, trace that evolution, each reflecting a different chapter in her understanding of herself and the world.
With work exhibited internationally and commissioned for private, corporate and hospitality spaces, Gilbert has built a career around the belief that art can communicate something beyond its physical form. Now, as she explores resin and circular compositions in her latest body of work, Tides Within, she continues to investigate the emotional layers beneath the surface.
In conversation with The FLUX Review, Gilbert discusses the courage to relinquish control, the transformative power of painting and why the most interesting moments often arrive when things don’t go to plan.
Your work is rooted in abstraction and physical, instinctive mark-making. What first drew you towards abstraction as the most natural language for your ideas?
I hated painting politely.
I was initially drawn to architecture and cityscapes, then landscapes. But I didn’t want to simply reproduce what was in front of me. I wanted the freedom to express, interpret and play with how I saw the world.
Abstraction allowed me to do that. It gave me the opportunity to explore colour, movement and mark-making without being restricted by what something was supposed to look like.
You have spoken about working between control and surrender. What allows you to recognise when to direct a painting and when to let the materials take over?
Before I start, I take a moment to connect with the canvas and set an intention that whatever I create will bring more joy and light into the world, wherever it eventually lands.
This is my surrender. I put my headphones on, listen to the same playlist and enter a meditative state for creation.
From there, the painting takes me on a journey through colour, composition, contrast and connection. I don’t start with a fixed idea of what the finished piece should look like. I allow myself to explore what happens on the canvas rather than trying to control where it goes.
The only decision that comes later is knowing when to stop!
Your recent Flow works have been created using pigment, acrylic and ink on raw canvas. What did working directly onto raw canvas open up for you that a more prepared surface could not?
Working on raw canvas was almost seductive because I could see the creation in real time. It was a much slower pace of creation.
I was in awe of observing the pigments and inks dance in the water, spread and blend into one another. It was completely captivating. There’s something quite beautiful about allowing the materials to flow and seeing what happens.
I always feel that when I introduce white, that’s when the magic happens. It’s a thicker paint, so it behaves very differently on the canvas. It lifts the whole painting and brings another dimension to the marks.
The inks feel slow and sensual, whereas the white feels more confident.
I love that contrast, and the way these different materials interact is what makes the process so exciting for me.
Colour is central to your work, but it often seems to carry an emotional rather than purely visual role. How do you know when a particular colour belongs in a painting?
Colour is very intuitive for me. I’ve created around 700 paintings now, so I think there’s a certain amount of experience behind that instinct. Over time, you develop an understanding of which colours work together, even if you’re not consciously thinking about it while you’re painting.
I’m also hugely influenced by the landscape around me and the changing seasons.
I notice that more golden tones find their way into my paintings during the summer, earthier colours in autumn and more blues in winter.
It’s not something I plan. I think we absorb so much from our surroundings without even realising it, and for me, that naturally comes through in the colours I choose.
Your collections have carried titles such as Freedom, Relief, Limitless, Joy and Flow. Do those titles begin with an intention for the work, or do they emerge once you understand what a body of paintings has become?
The collection names tend to emerge naturally. Each one reflects something I’ve been exploring or discovering about myself and life at the time.
Flow (2025) is about presence, adapting to life and learning to let go of control. Working with pigment, acrylic and ink on raw canvas felt like a natural expression of that idea. I loved watching the materials move freely, allowing the colours to find their own way.
Joy (2022–2023) was full of colour, energy and expressive brushstrokes. But behind it was my belief that joy isn’t something we need to search for outside of ourselves. Amongst all the busyness of life, we can only find true joy when we look within.
Relief (2021–2022) explored the ups and downs of life through texture. Those peaks and dips on the canvas represent the challenges we face, which can feel like enormous mountains at the time. But when we zoom out, those mountains become patterns within the bigger picture of our lives. I wanted to explore the idea that we are whole, not broken.
Freedom (2020–2021) came from the understanding that no one and nothing else defines who we are. And Limitless (2020) was about recognising our potential and questioning the boundaries we place on ourselves.
Looking back, I can see how each collection reflects a different stage in my own thinking and personal evolution. The titles aren’t something I decide in advance. They come from recognising what the work has been expressing all along.
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- The Art of Becoming © Joanna Gilbert
You describe painting as something that comes from a deeply instinctive place. Has it become easier over time to trust that instinct, or does doubt still play an important role in the studio?
Trusting my instinct has absolutely become easier over time. When I first started painting, I was always asking for advice about which colour to use next or whether a composition was working. But with experience comes confidence, and with experimentation comes knowledge. After years of painting, I now have a much stronger sense of what works for me. I just know.
That’s not to say every painting goes smoothly. Far from it! And those difficult paintings are beautiful reminders for me of just how hard it can be to get something right every time.
What’s interesting is that when I get really frustrated with a painting, something unexpected often happens. I reach a point where I’ve almost given up on it, and suddenly I’m much more courageous. I’m no longer worried about ruining it, so I’ll try something completely different.
And quite often, that’s when the painting takes a surprising turn. Those moments push me to experiment further and trust my instincts even more.
Scale is significant in your practice, with many works created in a large format. What happens physically and emotionally when you work at that scale?
I absolutely love painting big! Give me a big brush, especially a paddle brush, and a huge canvas and I’m happy.
Working small feels restrictive to me, both physically and emotionally. It becomes too detailed, too controlled, and I feel constrained by the space.
The largest painting I’ve created was a private commission measuring 2m x 2.5m, and it was an absolute joy to paint.
There’s something wonderful about being able to walk across a canvas with a brush in my hand, using my whole body to make marks. I love exploring the contrasts between thick and thin paint, light and dark, and watching how those different elements come together.
For me, painting at that scale is about freedom of expression. It’s a physical and emotional connection between me, the canvas and the world around me.
Your paintings are highly gestural, with speed and movement playing an important role in the finished surface. How conscious are you of your own body and movement while you are painting?
I’m not particularly conscious of my body or movement while I’m painting because I’m usually completely absorbed in what I’m doing. It’s only when I watch recordings I’ve made for social media that I notice there are certain movements and processes I naturally repeat.
I’m more aware of them when I teach workshops and find myself explaining how I hold different brushes. With a short paddle brush, for example, I’ll grip it quite tightly and keep it connected to the canvas until the paint runs dry. I’ll tilt my hand from the wrist to create some of my signature marks.
With a longer-handled brush, I’ll hold it right at the end and stand further back from the canvas, deliberately giving myself less control over the marks.
I also love working in a way that lifts the paint from the layer underneath, allowing new forms to emerge. There’s something very instinctive about that process. I’m not analysing every mark or trying to plan the outcome. I’m responding to what’s happening in front of me.
I think that’s what I love most about painting. My body seems to know what to do before my analytical mind has a chance to get involved.
You completed your MA at Chelsea College of Arts after already developing an established practice. How did returning to formal study change or challenge the way you thought about your work?
Going to Chelsea to do my master’s was honestly a dream come true. I remember thinking that it was the first decision I’d ever made entirely for me, by me. I was around 40 years old. Crazy, isn’t it?
I’d spent so much of my life doing what other people thought I should do, playing the roles of wife, mother and daughter, and somewhere along the way I’d forgotten who I was.
So Chelsea was a defining moment for me in more ways than one. I was going through a divorce at the same time as finding my voice through art. It felt as though everything was breaking down so I could finally break through. Art became my language, my voice, and a way of seeing the world differently.
The course challenged me in ways I hadn’t expected. We were told that painting was dead and the future of art was digital, which was an interesting perspective to encounter as someone who loved painting so much!
I was also encouraged to explore my background in marketing and bring that into my art conceptually. That led to a project called Nothing to Buy, which became a real turning point for me.
The idea was to question our relationship with hyper-consumerism and the constant message that we need more. We already have everything we need inside ourselves. A Swatch and a Rolex both tell the time, yet we attach completely different meanings to them. I didn’t need the latest iPhone, but I still wanted it.
I was a marketer’s dream with an artist’s eye!
For the project, I found an empty shop in Southgate owned by TfL and projected colourful images of Oxford Street shopfronts into the space. Then, quite unexpectedly, a TfL photographer came along and photographed the installation. I ended up using that photograph on a makeshift billboard at Chelsea for my final piece.
I could never have planned that sequence of events. One decision led to another, and the project developed in ways I couldn’t have imagined at the beginning.
Looking back, that experience taught me as much about trusting myself as it did about making art. It was proof to me that sometimes you just have to take that first courageous step and see where it leads.
Your work has moved between gallery exhibitions, private collections and commissions for hotels, businesses and other public spaces. Does knowing where a painting may eventually live ever affect the way you make it?
The joy for me is always in the creation. If I were constantly thinking about where a painting might end up, I wouldn’t be fully engaged with the creative side of my brain. I trust that my paintings will find their way to wherever they’re meant to go.
Commissions are slightly different because a client will often fall in love with an existing painting and want something similar, perhaps in a different size or colour palette.
But I always explain my process. I’m not a computer! I can’t reproduce a painting exactly, nor would I want to. The act of painting, for me, is human expression in its purest form. Every painting takes on its own personality as I work, and that’s what makes an original so special.
Even with a commission, I need to have the freedom to follow my instincts and allow the painting to become what it wants to be.
Your practice often connects painting with ideas of resilience, self-discovery and personal transformation. How important is it that a viewer understands those ideas, rather than simply responding to the work visually?
Of course I’d love people to understand the ideas and personal experiences behind my paintings, but I’m not attached to whether they do or not.
I have no control over what anyone else thinks or feels. We all experience the world through our own minds, shaped by our own lives and perspectives.
I’d like to believe that someone looking at my work might feel a deeper connection to it, perhaps sense something of the journey that brought me to the point of creating it, or better still, see a reflection of their own journey within it.
Because when you strip everything back, I don’t think our stories are so different. We all want to feel safe, loved and accepted, without conditions. We might take very different paths through life, but those fundamental human needs connect us all.
And I love that abstract art gives people the freedom to find their own meaning.
Ultimately, my paintings bring joy, colour and movement into a space. And if that’s all someone sees and loves about them, I’ll happily take that!
Looking at the development from Freedom and Limitless through to your Flow works, where do you feel your practice is heading next?
I’m currently working on a completely new body of work called Tides Within, created with resin on circular panels.
I’ve chosen to work with circles because I don’t believe growth is linear. Life moves in cycles. We revisit experiences, encounter familiar emotions and sometimes find ourselves back in places we thought we’d moved beyond. But we’re never quite the same person we were before.
Tides Within explores the things moving beneath the surface of all of us: our emotions, beliefs, memories and experiences, and the ways they shape our lives, often without us being consciously aware of them.
I’m fascinated by those moments when we begin to see things differently. When something that once felt enormous loses its power over us, or when we recognise a pattern we’ve been repeating without even realising it.
And the resin itself is symbolic for me. There’s something about glossing over the layers beneath, almost like the way we gloss over parts of our own stories. The surface can appear beautiful and seamless, but underneath it there’s a whole history of marks, movement and experiences that have shaped what we see.
I’m loving experimenting with the resin and circular format, and seeing where this new body of work takes me.
It’s an exciting new direction technically, but it also feels like a natural continuation of the ideas I’ve explored through Freedom, Relief, Joy and Flow. Each collection has been an exploration of what it means to be human.
Website: joannagilbert.com
Instagram: @joanna_gilbert_art
