“Louvre (barge)” (2025), oil on canvas, 14 x 29 inches (© Mitchell Johnson, 2025)
In his personal phrases:
“I did a tv interview with MonacoInfo through the museum retrospective in Cap d’Ail, and so they requested what I deliberate to do subsequent, and I blurted out, ‘I think I’m going to hire an house in Paris.’ We discovered a spot within the eleventh arrondissement, Rue de Good, with wonderful gentle and huge home windows that regarded out on attribute Paris rooflines and chimney pots, but additionally a park and up to date structure.
The constructing facade by our kitchen window modified look always with a variety of soppy and harsh Paris gentle. This singular gentle had already appeared in plenty of my work from 2020 to 2024. My frequent walks right down to the Seine, crossing the Pont de Sully, watching the river match the inexperienced iron railing sooner or later and seem black one other, looping via the Luxembourg and coming again via the Marais, I started to see work all over the place in locations I hadn’t been noticing. I took images and made occasional drawings. I collaged totally different occasions of day into single work with the intention to get the colour I used to be after, but additionally a calmness to resolve my emotions of being overwhelmed by town’s look.
I had a pop-up exhibit in March within the Marais. Simply earlier than giving up the house in June, I had a solo exhibit at Galerie Mercier within the seventh, two blocks from the place [Edward] Hopper had lived on Rue de Lille in 1906. I rode the metro commonly from Charonne to St. Germaine des Pres delivering issues to the gallery, carrying work of Paris, but additionally a few of San Francisco, Truro, New York Metropolis, and Newfoundland that have been made in Paris. The extra intimate relationship with Paris opened doorways to new coloration prospects in all the things I labored on. It was a transformative 12 months during which I barely went to the museums, decided to search out my very own response to town itself.”
Johnson’s work are within the everlasting collections of over 35 museums and have appeared regularly in The New York Occasions Journal, The New Yorker, and WSJ Journal. They’ve additionally appeared in quite a few function movies, together with The Vacation (2006), Loopy, Silly, Love (2011), and It’s Difficult (2009). Johnson’s forthcoming exhibition, Twenty Years in Truro, can be on view at Truro Middle for the Arts in Massachusetts, September 3–14, 2025. One in every of his work can also be included within the present Latest Acquisitions, on view on the Cape Cod Museum of Artwork via July 23, 2025.
“Luxembourg” (2025), oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches (© Mitchell Johnson, 2025)
