top of page
01
Portrait of the Artist as an Artist
I had decided to be an artist age five - this painting shows me in my parents house, now destroyed by fire, surrounded by my paintings, based loosely on a self portrait my Elisabeth Vigée le Brun.
02
Becoming Wilma 2025
I walked in to college one day wearing a cave woman sheepskin with matching suede mini skirt and a my hair in a chaotic beehive.
“Wow, nice jacket - you look like a Flintstone!” Said a friend, who had recently changed her name to Bic because she liked biros. “We should call you Fred!”
“Don’t call me Fred, call me Wilma!” I said, and that it stuck.
03
The Maypole 1982
This symbolisws the Golde Age of Neo Naturism, rituals influenced by pagan rites mixed with subversive body painted performance art. For us nudity was a statement of freedom and body paositivity.
04
Green Goddess 1985
Part of my first West End exhibition in 1985, a moment when I felt like an art star and the world was my oyster. Painting and performance art mingled in autobiographical paintings.
05
Waiting for Superbarrio
After being dumped by my gallery and my boyfriend, I ran away to Mexico to follow the fiesta....this shows me in the Colonia Morelos in Mexico City with my friend Genaro and his 11 brothers
06
The Jungle
When I come back from Mexico I meet a man in a bar. He invites me to comCoasta Rican Rain forest on our honeymoon, I am pregnant in the jungle with howler monkeys throwing mangoes at me......
07
The Westernmost Kitchen
We move to the westernmost tip of Europe on the Dingle peninsula. In the westernmost kitchen I cook crab and seaweed for my three children while my husband is out on the wild ocean catching supper or catching waves
08
Surf Mama
Out of the kitchen and into the surf I'm 44 and I've never done any sport in my life, but the wave is calling me. I paddle out into the macho world of basque surf bros and set up the Mamas Surf Club...
09
The Best of All Possible Worlds at Studio Voltaire
2016. The nest is empty, and after the blockbuster Neo Naturist Retrospective at Studio Voltaire, I decided it's time to come home to London and rejoin my tribe.
10
Wapping Mermaid in the drowned city of Londinium.
One constant in my life is my love of water, now no longer living by the ocean, I walk along the river Thames every morning. In the background a performance from the Wapping Live-in in 1982
01 / 10
Portrait of the Artist as an Artist
I had decided to be an artist age five - this painting shows me in my parents house, now destroyed by fire, surrounded by my paintings, based loosely on a self portrait my Elisabeth Vigée le Brun.
01
Portrait of the Artist as an Artist
I had decided to be an artist age five - this painting shows me in my parents house, now destroyed by fire, surrounded by my paintings, based loosely on a self portrait my Elisabeth Vigée le Brun.
02
Becoming Wilma 2025
I walked in to college one day wearing a cave woman sheepskin with matching suede mini skirt and a my hair in a chaotic beehive.
“Wow, nice jacket - you look like a Flintstone!” Said a friend, who had recently changed her name to Bic because she liked biros. “We should call you Fred!”
“Don’t call me Fred, call me Wilma!” I said, and that it stuck.
03
The Maypole 1982
This symbolisws the Golde Age of Neo Naturism, rituals influenced by pagan rites mixed with subversive body painted performance art. For us nudity was a statement of freedom and body paositivity.
04
Green Goddess 1985
Part of my first West End exhibition in 1985, a moment when I felt like an art star and the world was my oyster. Painting and performance art mingled in autobiographical paintings.
05
Waiting for Superbarrio
After being dumped by my gallery and my boyfriend, I ran away to Mexico to follow the fiesta....this shows me in the Colonia Morelos in Mexico City with my friend Genaro and his 11 brothers
06
The Jungle
When I come back from Mexico I meet a man in a bar. He invites me to comCoasta Rican Rain forest on our honeymoon, I am pregnant in the jungle with howler monkeys throwing mangoes at me......
07
The Westernmost Kitchen
We move to the westernmost tip of Europe on the Dingle peninsula. In the westernmost kitchen I cook crab and seaweed for my three children while my husband is out on the wild ocean catching supper or catching waves
08
Surf Mama
Out of the kitchen and into the surf I'm 44 and I've never done any sport in my life, but the wave is calling me. I paddle out into the macho world of basque surf bros and set up the Mamas Surf Club...
09
The Best of All Possible Worlds at Studio Voltaire
2016. The nest is empty, and after the blockbuster Neo Naturist Retrospective at Studio Voltaire, I decided it's time to come home to London and rejoin my tribe.
10
Wapping Mermaid in the drowned city of Londinium.
One constant in my life is my love of water, now no longer living by the ocean, I walk along the river Thames every morning. In the background a performance from the Wapping Live-in in 1982
- Self portrait of Wilma Johnson, the artist is surrounded by other self portraits, she holds a wine glass in one hand and a paint palette in the other
- Self portraits with cartoon aspects reflecting her name sake Wilma Flinstone, cave paintings grafitti ed over William Morris wallpaper in the background
- A dark landscape in which naked women dance around a maypole evoking pagan rituals or a Neo Naturist cabaret
- An emerald green paortrait of a woman's head , wearing neon orange lipstick, she is flanked by pregnant temple goddesses and ina gold trompe loiel frame
- Two women sit at a table where a Mexican feast is laid out, behind them men in bright coloured shirts and a portrait of Pancho Villa
- A preganant woman in a rain forest, the baby is visible like a scan, a yellow and black snake and tree frogs are both sinister and protective.
- Wilma in a kitchen, in a tropical patterned dressing gown, lobsters and crabs live and dead surround her
- A sequinned collage of a woman standing elegantly on a surf board, the wave behind her shimmers with sequins
- A self portrait in body paint, the face in close up, with a full length figure behind in the style of Matisse the red room
- A mermaid sits on a rock in a dark landscape, a plateau de fruits de mer in front of her, the mermoids tail is pattereed like mackerel skin and overlaid with silver and gold leaf
bottom of page