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Born in Colwyn Bay, Nerys Johnson was a widely respected curator and artist. She lived with rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic progressive illness that causes pain, swelling and stiffness in the joints. As a result, her work became smaller and more focused as her mobility became limited. Here, Johnson uses dark background colours and negative space to emphasise the brilliance of colour and the structure of forms. Flowers were the main subject of Nerys Johnson’s art, especially in the last ten years of her life. In this period, she was mostly housebound but could still access flowers to draw and paint from. She loved their colours, referring to flowers as ‘nature’s paintbox’. Her favourites to paint were ‘those with strong colour and a bold form, such as tulips, artichokes, sunflowers, gerberas, poppies, lilies and irises’. ‘For a long time, flowers have been a major source of inspiration for my work. They are alive, and I try to convey that sense of living. They grow, change, decay and metamorphose. In a drawing, the sense of movement, structure and rhythms is expressed through the marks and lines; in a painting, this is achieved through the balance and contrasts of colour.’ - Nerys Johnson