mitchell johnson http://www.mitchelljohnson.com Paintings Thu, 16 May 2013 16:45:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 I’m back from Europe http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/2013/04/im-back-from-europe/ http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/2013/04/im-back-from-europe/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:32:55 +0000 admin http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/?p=1196

"Golden Gate from the Kabuki," 2013 42x32

The best way to find out about available paintings or to set up a studio visit is to send an email: contact@mitchelljohnson.com.

Click above on PAINTINGS to see an on-line gallery with prices, sizes and availability.  Watch for my work in the New York Times T Magazine, June 2.  I’m in California for the month of May and then gone for the summer.

]]> http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/2013/04/im-back-from-europe/feed/ 0 Truro Paintings http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/2008/04/truro/ http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/2008/04/truro/#comments Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:07:11 +0000 admin http://www.mitchelljohnson.com/2008/04/26/truro truro.jpg

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.
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