Truro Heart for the Arts at Fortress Hill in Massachusetts presents Twenty Years in Truro (Chosen Work 1989-2025), a solo exhibition of work by San Francisco Bay Space artist Mitchell Johnson, on view September 3–14, 2025. That is Johnson’s fifth exhibition at Fortress Hill, the place he teaches a grasp colour class each September.
There have been three watershed moments in Mitchell Johnson’s 45-year portray profession: the primary, a piece journey to France in 1989, the second, his transfer from New York Metropolis to Palo Alto, California in 1990, and the third, an preliminary portray journey to Cape Cod in 2005. In his personal phrases:
“I followed a very strong hunch that what I needed in 1989 was to leave graduate school and paint alone in France. It was all my idea, all my doing. In 1990, I was offered a chance to work in the studio of Sam Francis in Palo Alto, California. I didn’t want to leave NYC. I called Sol LeWitt on the phone, hoping he would say that I could join the Wall Drawing Team and stay in NYC. Instead he convinced me that I should move to California. In 2005, the art dealer Sally Munson invited me to visit Chatham, MA, to produce local work for a show she was curating of my European landscapes. My first paintings of Truro, paintings which changed my trajectory, were made because of Sally. Life, especially life in the art world, is an interesting combination of the things you pursue and the things that come your way. California fell into my lap. Truro fell into my lap.”
Johnson’s 20 years of annual portray journeys to Cape Cod began in Might 2005, instantly after he noticed the historic Giorgio Morandi and Josef Albers exhibit in Bologna, Italy. He arrived on the Cape at a pivotal second when his work have been turning into much less brushy, much less impressionistic, extra about giant areas of flat colour utilizing acquainted, even iconic, motifs to touch upon colour relativity. The vary of labor on view within the 2025 survey at Fortress Hill illustrates the significance of this primary keep on the Cape, analyzing the influence of North Truro motifs on all of his work. It options early Truro works borrowed from the Cape Cod Museum of Artwork, together with “Truro n. 6” (2005), which appeared in two characteristic movies by Nancy Meyers: The Vacation (2009) and Loopy Silly Love (2011). The present additionally consists of work from New York, Europe, California, New England, and Newfoundland.
“Truro n.6” (2005), oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches (© Mitchell Johnson)
Artwork critic Donald Kuspit reviewed Johnson’s work 3 times, together with in a 2023 Whitehot Journal article:
“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.”
In regards to the Artist
Mitchell Johnson started portray within the late Nineteen Seventies as an adolescent at Staten Island Academy. He obtained his MFA from Parsons Faculty of Design in 1990 and in addition studied portray, drawing, and artwork historical past on the Washington Studio Faculty and Randolph-Macon Faculty. His work are within the everlasting collections of over 35 museums. He has appeared on TV applications in France (BFM Good), Italy (Generazione Bellezza), and Monaco (Monaco InfoTV). He has been a visiting artist on the Josef and Anni Albers Basis, the American Academy in Rome, Borgo Finocchieto, and the LeWitt Home in Praiano, Italy.
In regards to the Exhibition
Twenty Years in Truro (Chosen Work 1989-2025) is on view September 3–14 on the Truro Heart for the Arts at Fortress Hill in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Artist Reception: Thursday, September 4, 4–6pm (ET)
Artist Speak: Friday, September 5, 3:00–3:30pm (ET)
Moreover, Johnson’s exhibition of Paris work at Flea Road in Menlo Park, California, has been prolonged via September 18.
“Six Pickets (Hydrangeas)” (2025), oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches (© Mitchell Johnson)
