There was an amazing turnout at the Open Studio. I’m going to get back to some focused studio time now and I’ll have some new work available in October. The new book will hopefully be ready by then and it will be released around the time of my show at Castilleja’s Anita Seipp Gallery in November.
Just a reminder that if you click on the “books” tab above you’ll see both of the hardcover monographs currently available on my work. They are available in person as well as at Amazon.com. You can see the books at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, San Francisco MOMA Museum Store, Stanford’s Cantor Center Book Store and the San Jose Museum of Art. A third book is coming out in the fall.
| My studio will be open along with the other 20 Cubberley artists on Mother’s Day weekend. The address is 4000 Middlefield Rd, Building E, Room 5 South Palo Alto. I’m there from 12-4, the others are there 11-5. The painting above is “Watsonville (Yellow)”, 2007 15×20 inches. Since “Cascina” from the invite card sold very quickly, and so many people are asking to see other available work, I’m posting this ONE other painting before the weekend. It’s $4,000 and will go to the first buyer that e-mails me! |
| Here’s the link for my new show opening saturday, May 3, 2008:Mitchell Johnson at Laurel Tracey Gallery |
About ten years ago I began writing a registration number, in pastel, on the back of each of my paintings to create a master list. There should be something like, MJ17-04, on the reverse with a Mitchell Johnson signature, or Mitchell Johnson copyright, and the painting’s title and date. If your painting doesn’t have a number please make a studio appointment or send me a JPEG and we’ll assign it a number. If you have a very early Mitchell Johnson painting that is not signed on the front, it definitely won’t have a registration number. I’m happy to sign it and give it a number. Feel free to call with questions: 650-537-1493.
| Just a reminder about the Mitchell Johnson open studio May 10-11, 12-4. This painting, Cascina, 2008, from the invite, is sold. If you e-mail I will let you know about other new work. |
| The Truro paintings represent the only thing remotely like a series that I’ve done. One of them appears behind Cameron Diaz in the beginning of “The Holiday” which was exciting, but also ironic. To think that a painting I was that anxious about would end up in a Hollywood film… I painted the first of these views on a very windy, but sunny afternoon on Cape Cod in May, 2005. I don’t paint on location as much as I used to, but I’m glad that this “series” was started by a piece made in situ. It was challenging to stand in the sand by a still-deserted row of cottages along the highway in Truro and try to do something that involved the ocean and the sky and the beach. In some ways I felt ridiculous, far more naked than when I paint outside in Europe. The sky on that trip was terrifically active, but there was an empty or melancholy feeling and I think some of that comes off in the painting. I don’t think this composition would have come about had I not stumbled on the Josef Albers show at the Museo Morandi in Bologna just a few months before ending up on the Cape. Seeing Albers and Morandi next to each other, very unexpectedly, in a space I know well, encouraged a moment of reflection on my own work; I saw clearly that I should simplify some of my compositions to allow the color to become more distinct, more of an obvious subject. It was a huge realization that has affected both my abstract and representational work and I will always see the Truro paintings as the beginning of a more distilled and articulate approach to color. |
You can see four large Mitchell Johnson paintings in the lobby of 333 Bush Street in San Francisco through June 21. The show includes the abstract painting above, Luca#2, 2006 42×70 inches, oil/linen.
The photo above is from a recent stay in Tirol on both the Austrian and Italian sides. I discovered Tirol during a long drive across Europe a few years ago to visit all of my favorite places within a few weeks of each other. In the summer of 2006 I drove from Copenhagen across Germany to Provence where I stayed in a small town called, Meyreuil, where I had lived in the early 90s. It was interesting to see Meyreuil after just painting a week earlier in Bornholm, Denmark - one of my favorite places to visit and paint. I enjoyed the chance to compare the light and the landscape of Provence with Bornholm. I made this crazy drive because I wanted to compare Scandinavia to other parts of Europe where I’ve worked. Normally, I see one place like, France or Bornholm, in the summer and then another say Tuscany, in the fall. I continued from Meyreuil to Buonconvento, a small town near Siena, and then when I headed north from Tuscany, I crossed into Austria using the Brenner Pass. My stay in Austria, specifically Stubaital, just a week ago was a chance to have another look at Tirol after realizing on my 2006 trip that this landscape is for me…The 2006 trip continued from Austria to Berlin and then again to Denmark and Gothenborg, Sweden. It’s a wonderful long story which will eventually become another post; photos and ideas from that trip continue to emerge as paintings in my Palo Alto studio. For now, this is just a glimpse of how I’m living the dream.
