Artist Mitchell Johnson is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of his work spanning nearly five decades at Flea Street gallery in Menlo Park, California. The show, titled "Paintings from North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Morocco (Selected Work 1979-2025)," runs from November 15 through December 20 and features paintings created during the artist's travels across multiple continents.
The exhibition includes newly created works from Johnson's recent trips to Brazil and Peru, alongside never-before-exhibited paintings from Morocco. Several very early pieces from the artist's career are also displayed to provide contextual background for his artistic development over the years.
Johnson's unique approach to color perception and art history has garnered significant critical attention from prominent art writers including Donald Kuspit, Alexander Nemerov, and Susan Emerling. His methodical teaching style was recently highlighted by Abraham Storer in the Provincetown Independent, following Johnson's exhibition "Twenty Years in Truro." Storer emphasized the central role of color perception in both Johnson's painting practice and his annual master color class at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill.
During a week-long workshop Johnson taught at Castle Hill in Truro this past September, he demonstrated his technical approach to color theory. "We're not here to be creative," Johnson told workshop participants on the first day, approaching color instruction like a technician. He used demonstrations with colored paper strips to show how the same green appeared dramatically different depending on its surrounding colors. In another exercise, he placed a brown rectangle on peach-colored paper, describing the effect as looking "like the end of the world" due to the stark contrast, then moved the same rectangle to his darker brown sweater, transforming its appearance to resemble "the Sun."
Critical reception of Johnson's work has consistently praised his unique position in contemporary art. Donald Kuspit wrote in Whitehot Magazine in 2024 that "Where Cezanne was a proto-modernist, making representational works that were implicitly abstract, Johnson is a post-modernist, making abstract works that are implicitly—often explicitly—representational." Alexander Nemerov, in his 2014 essay "Heir of Theirs: Mitchell Johnson and Fairfield Porter," noted that Johnson's paintings pleasingly suggest other masters like Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Giorgio Morandi, and Josef Albers, while avoiding superficial pastiche or melodramatic artistic struggle.
Susan Emerling's 2004 ArtNews review of Johnson's show at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica highlighted his "fresh and pleasing" European beach scenes, praising his use of "large brushy strokes and bright, often improbable colors" that give "dynamic form to everyday life with an Impressionist sensibility."
Johnson's artistic impact extends beyond gallery walls into popular culture. His paintings are held in the permanent collections of over 35 museums and have appeared in numerous feature films, including "The Holiday" (2006), "It's Complicated" (2009), "Crazy, Stupid, Love" (2011), and "The Family McMullen" (2025). Looking ahead, Johnson is scheduled to exhibit his work for the third time at Galerie Mercier in Paris in March 2026. More information about the artist and his work can be found at mitchelljohnson.com and on Instagram at mitchell_johnson_artist.
