Betty Johnson (nee Golding), artist

“”I don’t regard my efforts as ‘art’ but rather as decoration.”

Betty was a highly creative person. She worked with a variety of media through her life. She enjoyed drawing and painting watercolours. She made embroideries. She designed and dyed curtains. Her great love, however, was the medium of batik. Between May 1974 and May 1988 she produced at least 139 batiks which were major works, suitable for wall-hangings. She experimented constantly, with a variety of techniques, cloth, waxes, colours and themes. She kept detailed notes of her procedures for each of the batiks.

It seems to me that her works are certainly decorative, but they go far beyond decoration. The inventiveness, range and execution seem to me to be worthy of being called genuine graphic art of the highest order.

She had exhibitions at the Anglo-Mexican Institute and at the Galleria Kin in Mexico City. The photos below are from the exhibition at Galleria Kin in San Angel, Mexico City. In 1978, I think.

Unfortunately, neither Betty nor Charles were very interested in photography. They had a very basic cartridge camera, and even with that they did not photograph all of the batiks. The photographs above are the only ones which I have been able to find, and sadly, the quality is not good. This is a shame, because even first-rate photographs would have trouble capturing the subtlety and vibrancy of the colours and designs.

Below I have included two pages from her notebook on the batiks. You can see how much thought and detail went into each one.

notepad-sample-1

notepad-sample-3

More of Betty’s batiks, from photos provided by Richard Johnson. Some of these batiks are in his collection. Others are photos in his possession.