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"To write an essay about Ken Johnson's work does not allow one to speak, as one normally would, about a coherent style, a linear development, an orderly progression in the unfolding of a considerable talent.

Johnson has been drawing, painting, collecting, building, investigating and exploring from an early age. He has a voracious appetite for sensations and experiences. Coupled with great drive and prodigious energy his investigations have led him to all corners of the globe over the last thirty years.

His work has been influenced stylistically by each culture and produced bodies of work which are clearly indebted to this culture. This is an important learning strategy. Each time, almost imperceptably, his work has taken on a new richness and has extended his ability to deal with the central theme of his work, the Australian landscape. The strategy of having multiple picture planes, side by side, slightly out of register introduce a very important element into Johnsons paintings. He has managed to insert a time element into these paintings, a reference to film frames which is very persuasive and confidently places these images in the presence.

Ken Johnson has an enormously acute eye, he picks up nuances of change and subtleties of mood and colour with certainty of touch that makes him one of the most important painters, with a particular flair for the outback of Australia.

Sculpture is also an important way of working for this versatile artist. He has worked in a variety of mediums, most notably his stone carvings of figures and heads. He shows the same energy and versatility in this area as he does in his paintings. It all seems to stem from this exuberance to make, to come to grips with the essence of the experience and to make it manifest in the world. This talent for making is extended into building his own houses and studios and garden walls and on and on, peopling the landscape with his sculptures and creating a world which is truly his own."

Bert Flugelman 2006