JOANNA TURLAND
FAITHFUL FAMILIARS
Works on paper
30.10.-30.11.25
Fred, the Toad and the Bennu Bird
Gouache and colored pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm
2025
£322.00
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SGA presents ‘Faithful Familiars’
A new series of works on paper by Joanna Turland
For the first time, the artist presents a solo exhibition composed solely of works on paper, revealing a new facet of her visual language. An intimate and playful approach to drawing brings the energy of the artists large oil paintings into a smaller format that displays their continually evolving lexicon of symbols and imagery. Painted in gouache and pencil on paper, these works extend Joanna Turland's ongoing exploration of the self, the magical and the surreal.
Though modest in scale, the drawings possess a physical intensity equal to the artist's larger canvases. The immediacy of drawing grants her the freedom to move fluidly between works, each pinned to the wall of her studio and developed in unison. In this dialogue, the pieces remain energetically interconnected and their vitality held within the intimacy of paper.
The Magician and the Donkey
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm
2025
£322.00
Joanna
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
12 x 18.5 cm
2025
£98.00
“For me, painting is both vocational and devotional, a daily practice which I am compelled to do. Through this ‘art alchemy’ I translate my thoughts, emotions, and lived experience into something physical, creating compelling work that can be contemplated and engaged with. In this way, the work functions simultaneously as a reflection of my own inner cosmology, and being a means of deepening my understanding of the self.” - Joanna Turland
The Singing Goose
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
28 x 40 cm
2025
£322.00
Anna, the violin and the Seahorse
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm
2025
£322.00
Joanna and Anna
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm
2025
£322.00
Turland treats drawing as part of painting. She pins sheets to the walls of her studio, moves between several at once, and keeps her whole body engaged: “There’s a particular joy that comes from engaging the whole body in the act of painting and one that I always come back to, it’s part of the ritual I have developed in order to make work. ” - Joanna Turland
The resulting drawings are bright, surreal, and quietly uncanny. They depict figures, often the artist herself and those close to her, in a strange communion with animals; owls, donkeys and toads. The artist calls these ‘faithful familiars’ of her work, the name given to her ever expanding pantheon of creatures that recur throughout the paintings. These beings occupy the liminal space between the domestic and the imaginal, evoking the esoteric language of tarot and alchemy while resisting fixed meaning. Other new symbols include a violin, a seahorse, a snake, and a goose.
Within the artist’s practice the imagery unfolds like dream logic, each work a fragment of an unfolding personal worldview. If her large oil paintings offer an engulfing, mythic scale, Faithful Familiars draws that mythology inward. These works are gateways created by the artist for the viewer to enter into. They offer insights into the subtle, uncanny undercurrents of the world that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
The Magic Snake
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
29 x 40 cm
2025
£322.00
Boy and the Goose
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper
30 x 42 cm
2025
£322.00
Joanna Turland is a Contemporary Painter and graduate of Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London.
The Artist works with symbols and metaphor to inform the allegory of her work. The paintings are woven with a deep personal mythology incorporating both her imagined and material world. Portraits are mixed with archetypes, imagined spaces with the material. Through the language of paint and an intuitive approach the Artist tells evocative and compelling stories about her life and personal lore.
The Artist has been shortlisted for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award, BP Portrait Award, the Clyde and Co Art Award and the Signature Art Prize.
The Artist has shown her work internationally including the Luxembourg Contemporary Art Fair as well as showing her work in London and Madrid. Joanna Turland has had three solo shows to date and held her first international solo show Curious Tales with Steingast Art Gallery in Vienna, Austria 2023.