At the bottom of a white staircase
Wilma Johnson was born in London and has a first class degree in Fine Art from St Martins College of
Art. She founded the Neo
Naturists along with Christine and Jennifer Binnie, a bodypainted
performance art which appeared at a variety of London’s venues collaborating
with artists such as Derek Jarman, Michael Clark, Andrew Logan and Leigh Bowery.
Her artistic work has been deeply influenced by her travelling
experiences like hiking the Scottish highlands, Lapland, and Iceland; her
experience in Mexico to where she arrived just for holidays and finally she
stayed there for a year; her years in Ireland while bringing up three children,
and her current life in a little fishing village near Biarritz to where she moved
in 2001 and where she wrote her memoir Surf
Mama released in 2011 which tells the story of her life as an artist,
single mother, neo naturist but mainly her decision at 44 to become a surfer. She
explains that her creative process is quite ritualistic and all she experiences
along the process goes somehow onto her artwork. We can definitely say her life
is her art and vice versa.
Who is really Wilma Johnson?
I’m an artist, mother,
surfer, writer, traveller, neo naturist, dog trainer …. it depends what day you
catch me on…
What’s art for you?
Anything from cave
painting to grafitti. Sometimes I’m quite traditional and use oil on linen,
sometimes I make frames out of rubbish I find on the beach and paint people’s
bodies.
Are you traditional in other aspects of life?
No, I don’t think so,
I hate traditional as in conventional, but I do like really old traditions like
weird dances and carnivals– and my surf style is quite old school.
You studied painting at London’s St Martin’s
College of Art. Why did you choose painting as a way of expression?
My uncle was a
landscape painter, he used to let me follow him when I was a child as long as I
promised not to speak. He took his easel to the beach and I watched him cover
huge canvases in an hour or two, it seemed like magic. He was very bohemian –
he wore caveman furs and drank a lot of whisky…. I think he was an early role
model.
And what have you learned at the College of
Art?
I didn’t learn
anything from my tutors – they were all abstract expressionists, they hated me
so I didn’t have a tutor. But I learned a lot from having a studio in Soho and
being able to paint all day – and I met a lot of amazing people there, fashion
designers, film makers and conceptual artists as well as painters.
What are your artistic references?
Primitive, tribal, naïve,
outsider art. Heironymous Bosch, Manet, Frida Kahlo, Goya, Toulouse Lautrec.
I’m feeling quite Art Nouveau and Parisian right now.
No contemporary artists?
Yes, I think I kind of
misunderstood that question. I’ve worked with a lot of contemporary artists,
starting with the Neo Naturists – the Bonnies and Grayson Perry, we also
collaborated with people like Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark, Derek Jarman and
Andrew Logan, which definitely influenced my work.
I don’t really think
of myself as part of any mowement now, like to keep a wide range of influences.
The best show I saw last year was New York feminist Judith Bernsteins’ Birth of
the Universe, the last piece I bought was by a skate and tattoo artist called
Jean Rockeadi. (It wasn’t a tattoo – but he said he’d do me one I’m quite
tempted)
You also set up the Neo Naturist performance
art group with Christine and Jennifer Binnie. In what did it consist?
We did cabarets wearing
nothing but bodypaint, they usually involved a mixture of cooking,
transformations, yoga, dancing, on-stage painting, rituals and poetry. Sometimes
it seemed like a joke, sometimes it seemed like a subversive feminist art
movement. I guess it was a bit of both.
And how do you see the situation of women right
now?
There’s this
ridiculous idea that there’s no need for feminism now! I did a shoot for a big
UK newspaper and the photographer told me they weren’t allowed to print
pictures of women in jeans because it was threatening. Most of world is still
run by men and anyone who doesn’t realise that is in denial.
All this happened in the early years of the
Thatcher’s era and the punk movement. How did you live those years?
I started off as a
punk when I was 17 and once had a date with Joe Strummer! But it was very
negative, and I got sick of wearing black plastic. It was great when I got to the
art college and the New Romantic movement started… I wore feather hats and ballgowns to paint
in, and went to the Blitz dressed as Marie Antoinette. The Neo Naturists were
part of the new romantics, but we were also rebelling against them, a lot of
them wore white, so they were quite scared of the bodypaint!
Do we have a sane relation with nudity?
No, although there are
loads of naturist beaches here which is a good start …
Your painting work is also deeply inspired by
nature and hiking round natural landscapes around the world. What does nature
give to you?
It’s funny no-one’s
ever said that before. I love wild places and extreme landscapes, lava fields,
stormy oceans, deserts, jungles. I climbed a mountain yesterday because it was
my birthday, my friends asked why didn’t you go shopping or go to San Sebastian
for tapas? but I liked getting caught in a blizzard on the mountainside…. I
often have my best ideas when I’m alone in the wilderness.
When I first saw your artwork I thought
immediately of Frida Kahlo and then I read you’ve stayed in Mexico for a year
in the late eighties. How it was?
I went to Mexico after
a friend gave me a book about Frida because she thought our work was similar...
On my second day there I met one of her friends in Oaxaca, (Arturo Garcia
Bustos who threw the communist flag over her coffin.) He said I reminded him of
Frida and took me to their old hang outs, he bought me red lipstick and tried
to lend me one of her huipiles for a fiesta once, but of course it was way too
small.
I spent the whole year
travelling, painting and going to fiestas and carnivals, it was very
inspirational.
Then you moved to Ireland where you stayed for
ten years where you had a revelation that changed your life again. What changed
then?
Yes, I realised that I
wanted to be a surfer when I was forty. I’d never done any sport in my life,
but I decided I had to ride the waves one day when I was being earth mother on
the beach, looking after the kids and cutting up banana bread. I loved Ireland
but I needed a new adventure.
We went to live in
Biarritz and I swapped a painting for a board. It was a bit of a disaster at
first, but I didn’t give up, and now I’m a certified surf addict.
You set up the Mamas Surf
Club. What’s its
purpose?
It was set up to get
together women in their forties to learn to surf together. A lot of people
thought we were too old, and not many women surfed at the time, so we had a lot
to prove, to ourselves and the macho surf world…I think we did prove
it because there are a lot of other Mamas Surf Clubs along the Basque coast
now.
“One
woman search for love, happiness and the perfect wave” from your book Surf Mama. How it was the experience of
writing about your life?
The good thing about writing
about yourself is that it pushes you to make different choices- you can’t write
a book about sitting on the sofa watching TV, you have to get out there and do
something exciting… even if it ends badly it makes a better story! It made me appreciate all
the things I have done as well.
Have you already found love, happiness and the
perfect wave?
Yeah, but you can
never get enough love happiness or perfect waves… the search continues.
Could you tell us a dream?
When we were neo
naturists we used to all have a recurring nightmare that we got on stage and
had forgotten to take our clothes off, like the reverse of most people’s
anxiety dream. The others would be all painted and covered in jewels and stuff,
and I’d be there in old jeans and no make-up.
Then when I learned to
surf I dreamt I was caught out in these tidal waves, but gradually that dream
was replaced by one where I was looking for a wave but it was flat – I think
that’s when I realised I was a real surfer!
An interview by Juan Carlos Romero
Wilma Johnson website
Photos courtesy of Wilma Johnson
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