armenjohnimages

As a Los Angeles–based artist and graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, I draw upon photography, painting, and visual design to explore transformation, memory, resilience, and perception.
 

My artistic journey began with photography, where I learned to recognize the extraordinary in ordinary moments and overlooked spaces. Over time, my practice evolved beyond documentation into a process of transformation. My photographs become the foundation for compositions that move between observation, abstraction, and imagination.
 

I work primarily with photographs that I take myself. I digitally transform and develop these images, then print them onto heavily textured canvas and work directly over the printed surface by hand using oil sticks and mixed media. Through layers of color, texture, abstraction, and paint, I transform the photographic foundation into a new physical artwork. The printed image is not the finished artwork—it is the starting point for the painting and mixed-media process.
 

Much of my work is inspired by weathered walls, torn posters, faded paint, graffiti, and the layered surfaces of the urban landscape. Rather than seeing these fragments simply as signs of decline, I see them as records of time—evidence of lives lived, histories layered, and places continually changing.
 

Influenced by modernist abstraction and the compositional discipline of photography and design, I seek a balance between observation and imagination, structure and spontaneity. Ultimately, my work invites viewers to slow down, look closer, and discover beauty and meaning in transformation.