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 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."

Mitchell Johnson Exhibit "La révélation de Meyreuil" at Musée de la Villa les Camélias, Cap d'Ail / May 17-September 29, 2024

 Save the date, May 17, 2024 is the opening of the retrospective exhibit, "La révélation de Meyreuil",

at Musée de la Villa les Camélias, Cap d'Ail, France. The exhibit runs May 17-September 29, 2024.

"In 1989, at the age of 25, Mitchell Johnson left New York for his first trip to Europe — a voyage that would launch a lifetime of interaction with color. Landing in Gotland, Sweden, and making his way south to Meyreuil, France, he was drawn to and overwhelmed by the new landscapes and unfamiliar colors and patterns. Driven by a powerful instinct to translate what he saw into paintings, he returned again and again to work on location and to study in museums."

"Meyreuil Fiat," 1989 6x12 inches oil/panel

You can read more about the exhibit in this review by Donad Kuspit at Whitehot Magazine

and also in this article at Hyperallergic.

Mitchell Johnson Three Chairs Painting in September, 2023 WSJ Magazine Women's Fashion Issue

 

This WSJ ad was for the September, 2023 exhibit, It Takes Time, at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Truro, Massachusetts. The exhibit was reviewed by the legendary art critic, Donald Kuspit in WhiteHot Magazine. You can read the review here.

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Mitchell Johnson books and catalogs are available at Amazon.