Mitchell Johnson Paintings in the April 7 issue of The New Yorker and the April 6 New York Times Magazine

 

Inside Front Cover of April 7, 2025 New Yorker Magazine

Across from The Ethicist in April 6, 2025 NY Times Magazine

Mitchell Johnson (b. 1964, Rock Hill, South Carolina) is an American painter known for his vibrant, color-centric works that test the boundaries between abstraction and representation. His paintings are rooted in a deep investigation of color relationships, shape, and spatial perception, often drawn from his experiences in locations such as California, New England, Europe and Newfoundland.

Education and Early Career

Johnson studied painting and drawing at Randolph-Macon College (B.S., 1986) with Ray Berry, then studied art history, painting and drawing at the Washington Studio School and Parsons School of Design (M.F.A., 1990), where he learned from legendary teachers Leland Bell, Paul Resika, Robert De Niro, Sr., Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher and Nell Blaine. In 1990, he moved to California to work as a studio assistant for painter Sam Francis, an experience that helped shape his mature approach to color and scale. He also studied with Wolf Kahn In Santa Fe, further deepening his sensitivity to color, scale and atmosphere.

Artistic Style and Philosophy

Art historian Peter Selz described Johnson as “an artist who makes realist paintings that are basically abstract paintings and abstract paintings that are figurative.” Johnson himself has noted, “I don’t paint chairs; I turn chairs into paintings,”encapsulating his approach to transforming the familiar through color, composition, and formal rigor.

His work often features distilled scenes—urban landscapes, architecture, coastlines—rendered with a painterly touch and bold, simplified blocks of color. This gives his paintings a formal structure while maintaining emotional resonance and a sense of place.

Critical Reception

Johnson’s work has been the subject of three major essays by renowned art critic Donald Kuspit, published in Whitehot Magazine. Kuspit writes that Johnson's paintings “demonstrate that realism can serve abstraction, and abstraction can serve realism,” praising his ability to bridge both traditions in a way that is highly original and formally inventive. Kuspit considers Johnson a unique voice in contemporary American art for his “realistic abstraction.”

Exhibitions and Collections

Johnson's work is held in over 35 museum collections and has been featured in solo exhibitions across the United States and Europe. Highlights include:

• A 2024 retrospective at Musée Villa les Camélias in Cap d’Ail, France.

• “Giant Paintings from New England, California and Newfoundland” at 425 Market Street, San Francisco (March–May 2025).

• Group Show Glass House, New Canaan, Ct in June.

• Numerous exhibitions at Truro Center for the Arts.

Public Exposure and Media

Johnson's work has also reached wider audiences through popular media:

• His paintings have appeared in major feature films, including The Holiday (2006), It’s Complicated (2009), and Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), helping to familiarize viewers with his distinct visual language.

• He has participated in several television interviews in Italy, France, and Monaco, including a 2024 appearance on BFM Nice discussing his Cap d’Ail retrospective and an interview on Monaco Info.

• In 2024, he appeared on the national Italian television program Generazione Bellezza during a special segment filmed at the Lewitt House in Praiano on the Amalfi Coast, highlighting his work in the broader context of artistic and cultural heritage.

Teaching

Once a year, Johnson teaches a master color class at Truro Center for the Arts.

Artistic Evolution and Independent Ventures:

After 25 years within the traditional gallery system, exhibiting in major galleries across San Francisco, New York, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles, Johnson embarked on an independent path in 2012. He initiated partnerships with prominent publications such as The New York Times Magazine, ArtForum, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and The New Yorker.This strategic move expanded his audience, allowing his paintings to reach readers nationwide and internationally. ​

Blog

Johnson writes weekly about color theory, art history and the art world on Substack.

Personal Life

Johnson lives and works in Menlo Park, California, with his wife, author Donia Bijan. His studio remains a space of continuous experimentation and refinement, as he pursues new formal challenges and explores the emotional resonance of color and place.

Mitchell Johnson Paris Painting, Fifteen Windows, in the March 30, 2025 New York Times Magazine

Advertisement for the exhibition of Giant Paintings in San Francisco

 in the March 30, 2025 New York Times Magazine, page 15, across from The Ethicist.
 

Mitchell Johnson is exhibiting seven large-scale paintings in the lobby of the San Francisco skyscraper 425 Market Street from March 17 to May 30. Works include “Trinity East (Iceberg)” (2020–2024), 78×120 inches, made after a 2018 trip to Newfoundland, as well as three paintings of Johnson’s ongoing muse, the Presidio Park, with its peculiar, still-life-like collection of buildings. Seven sets of note cards accompany the exhibition and are for sale at Amazon and SFMOMA as well as other museums and bookstores.

The exhibition has been reviewed by Donald Kuspit in Whitehot Magazine in March, 2025.

Here is an excerpt of the Kuspit essay:

“Morandi and Albers are Johnson’s role models or mentors.  To my mind’s eye they are phenomenologists par excellence, which is what Johnson is at his best—as in these paintings–aspires to be, however unwittingly.  According to the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, in the Phenomenology of Perception, “Phenomenology is a transcendental philosophy which places in abeyance the assertions arising out of the natural attitude, but it is also a philosophy for which the world is ‘already there.’  It is painstaking…in its attentiveness and wonder, its demand for awareness.”  As the philosopher John Cogan writes, in The Phenomenological Reduction, “There is an experience in which it is possible for us to come to the world with no knowledge or preconceptions in hand; it is the experience of astonishment…in the experience of astonishment, our everyday ‘knowing,’ when compared to the knowing that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a pale epistemological imposter.”  At their best, when they [Johnson’s paintings] have a kind of parsimonious aesthetic intensity and nuanced exactitude, and no longer register as the “belief-performance of our customary life in the world,” they are astonishing masterpieces of phenomenological perception, fraught with what the philosopher George Santayana calls “hushed reverberations.”

Johnson's paintings are in the permanent collections of over 35 museums as well as 700 private collections. His work has appeared in many feature films, most notably, Nancy Meyers films, The Holiday and It's Complicated. Seven paintings were also included in Crazy, Stupid, Love. Johnson's work is widely known because it has appeared in the New York Times Magazine over 200 times going back to 2012. Johnson has appeared on BFM Nice television in France and RAI 3 national television in Italy.

Mitchell Johnson Paintings in the 2025 WSJ Magazine

 

Mitchell Johnson "Giant Race Point Chair" painting in the March 2025 WSJ Magazine

Mitchell Johnson "Presidio #30" painting in the February 2025 WSJ Magazine

Mitchell Johnson is exhibiting seven large-scale paintings in the lobby of the San Francisco skyscraper 425 Market Street from March 17 to May 30. Works include “Trinity East (Iceberg)” (2020–2024), 78×120 inches, made after a 2018 trip to Newfoundland, as well as three paintings of Johnson’s ongoing muse, the Presidio Park, with its peculiar, still-life-like collection of buildings.

Read more about the exhibition in these articles in Hyperallergic, Whitehot Magazine and InMenlo.

Seven note card sets accompany the San Francisco exhibition and are available at Amazon, SFMOMA, Keplers Books, Explore Booksellers in Aspen and PAAM in Proincetown.

Mitchell Johnson Paintings in The New York Times Magazine January 5 and 19, 2025

 

Mitchell Johnson Positano Painting appears across from The Ethicist, Jan 19, 2025.

Mitchell Johnson Newfoundland Painting appears across from The Ethicist, Jan 5, 2025.

Click the image to enlarge.

New limited edition sets of boxed Mitchell Johnson notecards are available from Amazon.

Click to see the Amalfi set, the Newfoundland set.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Acquire Mitchell Johnson's Potrero Hill, 2004

Portero Hill, 2004,  9x12 inches, gouache on paper.

Click the image to see a larger version.

The Achenbach Foundation, part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, acquired this painting in 2005.

©2004 Mitchell Johnson, gouache on paper, 9x12 inches, Collection of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Achenbach Foundation. Gift of Bruce and Julie Tenenbaum.

The painting is reproduced in the Mitchell Johnson monograph from 2004 that accompanied exhibits of Johnson's work at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica.

Mitchell Johnson San Francisco Boxed Notecards Set now available at Amazon and Bay Area Museum and Bookstores

 

San Francisco Boxed Notecards is set #7 of seven new Mitchell Johnson notecard sets being released in January, 2025. Each of these seven limited-edition boxed sets of notecards are beautifully designed and feature 20 blank cards of 5 different paintings (4 cards of each) and 20 blank envelopes. The seven themes in this series capture the gamut of places that inspire Johnson's work: Amalfi Coast, North Truro (Cape Cod), Paris, Maine, Race Point (Provincetown), Newfoundland and of course, San Francisco. The photos below, included with each Amazon listing, provide a clear description of the contents of the set you are considering. A biographical flysheet accompanies each set and the colorful notecards are printed on high quality stock and are perfect for writing correspondence and thank you notes. The San Francisco set includes compositions based on views from 1750 Taylor Street (Russian Hill), 555 California Street, Chinatown and the Presidio. Mitchell Johnson moved to Palo Alto, California from New York City in 1990 to work for the artist, Sam Francis. He settled in California after meeting his wife, author/chef Donia Bijan.

Mitchell Johnson studied painting, drawing and art history at Staten Island Academy, Randolph-Macon College, The Washington Studio School, The New York Studio School, The Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts and in 1990 received an MFA in Painting from Parsons School of Design in New York City. Johnson's paintings are in the permanent collections of over 35 museums including Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Moderna in Rome, Museo Morandi in Bologna, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Achenbach Foundation in San Francisco and Bornholms Kunstmuseum in Denmark. A full list of museum collections is under the biography tab on his website. Johnson's paintings have appeared in numerous feature films including The Holiday (2006), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and It's Complicated (2009). Johnson has been a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Borgo Finocchieto in Tuscany and The LeWitt House in Praiano, Italy.

Mitchell Johnson North Truro Boxed Notecards Now available at Amazon

 

North Truro Notecards is set #1 of seven new Mitchell Johnson notecard sets being released in January, 2025. Each of these seven limited-edition boxed sets of notecards are beautifully designed and feature 20 blank cards of 5 different paintings (4 cards of each) and 20 blank envelopes. The seven themes in this series capture the gamut of places that inspire Johnson's work: Amalfi Coast, North Truro (Cape Cod), Paris, Maine, Race Point (Provincetown), Newfoundland and of course, San Francisco. The photos below, included with each Amazon listing, provide a clear description of the contents of the set you are considering. A biographical flysheet accompanies each set and the colorful notecards are printed on high quality stock and are perfect for writing correspondence and thank you notes. Mitchell Johnson has been making annual painting trips to Cape Cod since 2005. He teaches a master color class at Truro Center for the Arts each September.

Mitchell Johnson's color- and shape-driven paintings exist at the intersection of color theory, art history, nostalgia, and observed experience. His work is included in the permanent collections of over 35 museums and has been exhibited alongside works by Milton Avery, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wolf Kahn, and Richard Diebenkorn. The legendary art critic Donald Kuspit wrote about Johnson's work in Whitehot Magazine: "Johnson is a master of abstraction, as his oddly constructivist paintings show, but of unconscious feeling, for his geometry serves to contain and with that control the strong feelings implicit in his strong colors. Apart from that, his paintings are art historically important, because they seamlessly fuse abstraction and realism, which Kandinsky tore apart to the detriment of both even as he recognized that they were implicitly inseparable, tied together in a Gordian knot, as they masterfully are in Johnson's paintings."