Mitchell Johnson Archive

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Mitchell Johnson Amalfi Painting, Praiano, 28x40 inches

"Praiano," 2024 28x40 inches oil/canvas.

I made two painting trips to the Amalfi Coast in 2024. I stayed in Praiano, the village between Positano and Amalfi in February and March, when there is less tourism, but it's still possible to have mild days with gorgeous sun and changing light. The days are short but painting outside is possible if there's no wind, and you don't have to get up as early to catch the sunrise.

Praiano has lots of white buildings and houses and the very early light briefly turns the white into a mysterious honey color. Shadows on the white buildings can be unbelievably blue.

For my second trip I stayed at the LeWitt Collection, a house called Casa L'Orto, which is the family home of Carol LeWitt. My residency was connected to Marea Art Projects which arranges host situations for visual artists, writers and musicians during the winter months when Costiera experiences a brief lull in traffic and visitors.

My residency at Casa L'Orto was included in an episode of the RAI 3 program, Generazione Bellezza.

Mitchell Johnson and Emilio Casalini in Praiano, February, 2024

Monday, July 29, 2024

Mitchell Johnson Paintings in The New York Times Magazine June 30 and July 14, 2024

Both of these ads appeared across from The Ethicist column in the print New York Times Magazine June 30 and July 14, 2024. Mitchell's paintings have appeared in the NY Times over 200 times since 2012.

Find out what paintings are currently available by emailing: mitchell.catalog@gmail.com.

Friday, July 12, 2024

H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco visits exhibition "La Revelation de Meyreuil" at Musee Villa Les Camelias

Mitchell Johnson and H.S.H. at Villa Les Camelias July 3, 2024

Villa Les Camelias had a tenth anniversary celebration July 3, 2024 in Cap d'Ail, France, and in attendance was H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco. Mitchell Johnson and Prince Albert did a color changing exercise during the visit. The exhibition "La Revelation de Meyreuil" is on view at Musee Villa Les Camelias through September 29, 2024.

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

New Painting - "Pink Chair," 2022-2024 36x24 inches

I’ve been interested in the beach for as long as I can remember. It took a while to realize that what was intriguing me is the way man-made color separates from the backdrop of sky, water and sand. Even without the strong light of a sunny day, the dreamy space at the beach is unlike any other. Perhaps that’s what calls so many people to the seaside.

When I include umbrellas, towels or chairs in a composition, I’m turning them into paintings, I'm using them to talk about painterly space. As Deborah Butterfield put it so well on the occasion of her new exhibit of sculptures: "P.S. these are not horses".

P.S. these are not beach chairs.

As much as a painting might begin referencing a chair right in front of me, or a photo I carefully arranged, the chairs in the paintings never really exist. The Pink Chair in this post was in fact a blue chair I saw on Cape Cod and was able to draw and paint from life. Then in the studio, the color of the stripes kept changing until the stripes were completely covered and painted dull pink. The dull pink chair sat around the studio for months, sometimes it was turned to the wall, sometimes it was staring at me from across the room. Finally while mixing an orange for a new painting, a voice in my head sent me to get the painting and quickly I reworked the stripes finally achieving the right combination of clarity and surprise in the colors.

In 2012, the writer Chris Busa, described this process in an article for Provincetown Arts:
“If many of Johnson’s paintings are titled after the places that inspired them, no such places actually exist. Each one is a collage of compressed intimacies spread out over the months it takes to paint them. He has done what Edwin Dickinson called “Premier Coup”, in which a painting is completed outdoors in one blow. Yet his typical practice is to hold a painting for several months, or more, in the studio, to see if a painting stands the test of repeated looking, often involving the process of memory revision, where a succession of impressions gained over weeks or months is expressed as continuous flow.”