We meet Kathryn Johnson who tells us about nomadic living and creating art on the road.
If you were to type in #Vanlife on Instagram today almost 18 million posts would come up on your Explore feed.
The word has become the defining lifestyle aesthetic of the last decade, flooding the internet with images of windows framing breathtaking untouched landscapes, and people travelling around the world with not much more than their adventurous spirit and maybe a compostable toilet.
This way of living has sparked an explorer-like longing for adventure in many. Although there is a certain glamorised appeal for some, ‘vanlife’ is a way of living more freely, without the constriction of bills and rent for others.
Scottish-born Kathryn Johnson is a young artist, surfer, and vanlife participant who four years ago decided to embrace the nomadic living style. We sat down with her to understand her experience of living and creating her art while on the road.
In 2017 the New Yorker published an article about social media’s influence on the new ‘vanlife’ trend: “Scroll through the images tagged #vanlife on Instagram and you’ll see plenty of photos that don’t have much to do with vehicles: starry skies, campfires, women in leggings doing yoga by the ocean.”
It seems not much has changed in the eight years since. Social media still glamorises van-living and Kathryn wanted to stay away from the glossy granola guru version.
“It’s not glamorous. It’s not like it is on Instagram. It takes a lot to live this life but it has given me so much.”
This was one of the first things Kathryn talked about. The reality of living this kind of way is arguably gruelling, you are stripped of home comforts like plumbing, heating and the traditional four walls around you.
Kathryn also added taking points from her own experience: “I remember the first year I didn’t really mention it to anyone. I didn’t make it clear on social media that I was going to do it. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being influenced by people’s opinions,” she explained. “I didn’t want to be influenced by the glamour of it.”
People can crave a lifestyle change for hundreds of reasons. For Kathryn, the decision to live on the road came after she had experienced a different way of life.
“I undertook an art residency after I graduated from art school. It was three weeks with an indigenous village in Panama. I was aware that they lived very slowly. You never saw anyone rushing or running around but they still sustained themselves fully.”
She also admitted that just before the world was hit with the pandemic she felt a sense of frustration with her current lifestyle.
“Just before lockdown I felt really burnt out. I felt like I had completely lost that promise from when I came home from Panama to live a slower life. When lockdown struck I ended up living by myself on the outskirts of Aberdeen. I felt like there was no point in getting a flat in Aberdeen; my whole life like my hobbies, my art, and surfing were not there.”
Like many at this point in time Kathryn decided to make a change, but instead of going cold turkey on inhabiting a home in the traditional sense, Kathryn decided to bounce between her van and her current flat easing herself softly into a different lifestyle.
However, “over two months I had spent only one evening in my flat. If I wasn’t pulling pints I would be in my van.” After this point Kathryn decided to take the plunge fully: “I started full-time in October. I thought that if I started in the hardest part of the year I would be able to make it through to Spring and still love it.”
Now four years later, Kathryn is a strong advocate for the vanlife living style and all of its quirks. “The freedom, presence, and time to enjoy life in my early 20s and to pursue some sort of creative life was something I found very uncertain after I left art school,” she said.
“No one gave you a pathway or a way to understand it. When you are in the creative industry I think the freedom from societal routine makes you feel like you need to do a certain number of hours to make bills to make rent and you’re still meant to have this energy and passion for a creative practice.”
Kathryn opened up about post-degree instability and how she felt during this transitional period of her life. “I don’t think our society is built well for that and the van gave me the time. It gave me the time to make ‘bad art’ it gave me freedom and presence and more time for my schedule.”
Immersing herself in vanlife let Kathryn stay true to the promise she made to herself after her time in Panama. A slower life with more time to create. It sounds idyllic but Kathryn doesn’t want to add to the rose-tinted facade that vanlife has. Like anything, the lifestyle comes with its difficulties and challenges.
“Naively, when I first got the van I thought this would mean I would have loads of savings,” she jokes. “Money and financial issues do come up. If something breaks or there is an issue with the van you can’t wait around to fix it.”
This is potentially the biggest practical challenge with nomadic living. When something goes wrong, you don’t have the liberty of time and maybe a mechanic to help you. Breakdowns and damages can happen anywhere: you could be on an icy one-way road high above the clouds or in the forest with no mobile service and 50 miles away from the nearest person.
To have security you have to be resilient and prepared for the worst. “Vanlife has given me a big sense of resilience. Which I have resented building that resilience at times. There’s always issues in this way of life. Everything is a bit more laborious.”
“The van gave me the time. It gave me the time to make ‘bad art’. It gave me freedom and presence.”
Kathryn Johnson
On a more personal note, Kathryn also shared her experience with isolation while on the road. “One of my biggest challenges has been a sense of loneliness at times. Although I like doing things by myself I realise that I have chosen quite a lonely lifestyle. It has taken quite a lot on my own part to seek out a new home and a new community.”
It’s understandable how nomadic living can induce a sense of loneliness in its participants. “On the other end of things When you are living such a nomadic lifestyle it can also be hard when you find a community for those people to see you as a permanent part of that community.”
While this way of life graces people with a sense of independence, being able to go wherever they want whenever they want. The constant self-reliance and changing of location can lead to feelings of imposter syndrome and self-isolation.
Although Kathryn admits to having gone through these emotions, she also argues for the idea of experiencing different communities. “There’s a lovely aspect that you can be in countries where you don’t know anyone or in completely new places but you have the comforts of your home. Even now as I look towards home in a more permanent sense I think what I value out of a home is very different because I had this ‘snail shell’ on my back for four years.”
Kathryn now has a base where she spends the majority of her time in her van named Daisy. “Ireland. It is now my home. I would not call Ireland home if I had not had my van. I would never have gone there,” she explains.
“I originally went there to surf, knowing no one. The community is something else, The craic is something else,” she joked. “It’s stunning. It’s a place I can’t imagine not calling home now.”
Kathryn describes her new home fondly, “I found a community that accepted me fully in a surf town called Bundoran on the west coast of Ireland. They’re a community that’s quite something, everyone has a very good life balance. If you work 40 hours you’re mad. There’s a very strange little make-up of people in Bundoran, not a lot of us are from Ireland.”
When asked why she decided to settle down after four years with just herself and her van Daisy she responded: “It was a long time coming, and I didn’t really realise that was what I was looking for when I got into the van.” This hasn’t put a stop to Kathryn’s nomadic style. In the past month, she travelled to Morocco to escape the ice and rain.
So would she ever go back to fully living out of her van? “I’m not rushing back to it. You do really feel a lot more present and a lot more thankful every single day. That was quite a significant shift in my mind.”
As for any advice she would give to someone maybe interested in joining the vanlife community, she explained: “Like anything you should give it some time, it takes a while to find the best way to live like this. The benefits come after a while.”
Vanlife has impacted not only Kathryn’s lifestyle. It also has been a huge part of her artwork. Graduating from Aberdeen Greys School of Art in 2019 Kathryn has also created her art no matter if she was working, on the road or surfing.
“I’ve always chosen subject matter that I am personally interested in,” she told us. “My artistic style focuses on abstracted landscapes – it has done ever since my final years at art school.”
With her artwork being heavily linked with her surroundings and nature, it feels completely natural that she creates whilst living her nomadic lifestyle, the two live in harmony with each other.
Kathryn described her creative process: “If I choose subject matter that I need to work on then I have to be there, I have to be doing it, I have to be in nature; it keeps me grounded. It means you can really be in those experiences by making art from it.”
I asked Kathryn about what she thinks her work invokes: “I think it’s also a sense of being in nature that hasn’t been visualised as in painting.” Kathryn is referencing how many of her pieces depict being in the water.
“You know you have beautiful mountain landscapes, you have forests, and glens which have all been highly documented but the idea of actually being a person within the water I don’t think has been documented or explored as much.”
This unique perspective draws the viewer in. Her paintings have this continuous rhythm that is calming but also eye-catching.
“I feel the most present with nature when I’m in the water. It’s something quite particular to me. it’s a very hard thing to express properly. but I try.” Kathryn’s painting has an intimate interpretation, being so wrapped up in the elements adds a layer of closeness.
“I have always loved taking references from video stills. I could find really interesting compositions from this kind of footage. it takes everything out of your control. I can take a clip in the water when I’m surfing and not know if it’s any good. it could be a split-second frame that catches my attention.”
I asked Kathryn if the van had changed anything about her creative process: “When i started working on the road I hadn’t worked with pastels or any dry mediums before, I had worked with oil paint, which presents a conundrum when trying to create with oils on the road as they don’t really work together,” she said.
“It’s harder in the van. I get impatient. It’s slower to create more work you only have space for a few panels at a time. The van gave me the time. It gave me the time to make ‘bad art’. It gave me freedom and presence.” However, this frustration led her to experiment with different mediums such as pastels.
“Changing to pastels has made creating in the van easy. I cocoon myself in my van, put on some good music and settle in. It allows me to make a lot more work.”
As we neared the end of our talk Kathryn summarised her experience: “I think it’s a good thing that I can get to almost five years since I bought my van and still want to live life like the days I had when I just bought it,” she said.
“You know it’s not always fun. You have to be the kind of person who doesn’t care about things like not having a kettle. Take away the glamour of Instagram and look at it in a more realistic way.”
If you were to take away the glossy surface-level impression of ‘vanlife’ you would still be left with an exciting and grounded way of living. Kathryn like many others is an example of how to live this nomadic lifestyle and how to live it well.
Featured image courtesy of Kathryn Johnson.