Johanne Cullen paints people whose stare roots us to the spot with its sheer presence and intensity, drawing the viewer willy-nilly into a moment of shared intimacy. In her world, gestures become theatre, images evoke cinema. Emotion and sensibility graze the soul. Dreamlike, sometimes surreal, her paintbrush drips with mesmerizing, hypnotic strangeness..

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Displaying inner strength, her models exhibit serenity in the face of unnamed adversity. In this painter's parallel universe, gravity and fantasy echo, reverie and lucidity intertwine. After all, here is an artist who describes herself as “a realist thwarted by her imagination”...