Charlie Johnston
293 Whytewold Road
Winnipeg, Manitoba CA
R3J2W3
Profile Type: artist
Charlie Johnston, aka ‘C5Charlie’ is a painter, sculptor, and muralist who has been creating public art for 30 years, conceiving and executing large scale murals and sculptures in concrete, mixed media and bronze. With a technical, realist utilization of art materials to support a narrative approach to making art. He creates poetic experiences for the growth of individual and collective consciousness, remixing archetypes and genres to create new perspectives on the human experience. Before he became C5, Charles started his journey as an artist in Manitoba’s Interlake region as a young illustrator/ sculptor in the realm of comic/ fantasy art and portraiture. He studied Fine Art in Winnipeg, evolving his representational style and expanding his horizons. The scope of his work expanded even further after a decade as a billboard painter. With an ever-expanding sense of scale and technique, a new identity began to form for Charles. It was in this time that he became ‘C5’ and integrated a diverse range of stylistic motifs, materials and concepts into a new form and began to express it through a series of monumental murals and sculptures that began in Winnipeg, and have since spread out across Canada, into the U.S.A. and abroad. From the 10 story wolf mural and cast sculptures in the northern community of Thompson to the 100 foot tall Peanut Farmer silo mural in south Georgia, Charles has become a creator of icons. During this critical development, Charles never stopped working on his personal themes of irony and self-realization, while collaborating with communities to co-create larger visions. Conceptual multi-tasking has enabled C5 to fuel each creative act with a sense of freshness and vitality, and the artistic cross-pollination has yielded something more. Although C5’s self-incorporation has never involved graffiti, Charles has found himself aligned on a parallel track with the current street art movement. His experiences with mural art, sign writing, sculpture casting, comic art, digital and traditional art have fused together in a similar hybrid fashion in his evolving role as a Canadian public artist.