Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill will present a solo exhibition of paintings by San Francisco Bay Area artist Mitchell Johnson from September 8–20. The show marks Johnson’s sixth solo exhibition at Castle Hill, where he also teaches a master color class each September.
Castle Hill is pleased to present a selection of Johnson’s recent paintings in its new gallery at 10 Meetinghouse Road in Truro. Johnson has taken annual painting trips to the Outer Cape since 2005, and this exhibition will bring together new works along with several early Truro paintings never before exhibited publicly. It will also include Johnson’s first New England painting, “Fall (Tabor Academy)” from 1988, created while he was a graduate student at Parsons School of Design in New York.
The exhibition will also feature paintings from New York, Europe, and California. A new book, Mitchell Johnson: Twenty-One Years in Truro, will accompany the presentation.
Johnson’s yearly painting visits to Cape Cod began in May 2005, soon after he saw the historic Giorgio Morandi/Josef Albers exhibition at Museo Morandi in Bologna, Italy. He arrived on the Cape at a key point in his development, as his paintings were moving away from a brushier, more impressionistic approach and toward large fields of distinct color. Truro gave him an ideal setting to explore broader shapes and more distilled compositions, with its constant bands of sky, water, and sand.
Although Johnson has continued to travel and paint extensively in California, France, New York, and elsewhere, the Truro work holds a distinct place in his larger body of work. The landscape provides a visual framework that supports his continuing interest in color relativity, while recurring bands of sky, dune, road, cottage, shadow, and water allow him to simplify forms without giving up observation.
Public Programs
The Gallery at Truro Center for the Arts is open Monday-Friday, 10-4 and Saturday-Sunday, 12-4.
Artist reception: Thursday, September 10, 4:00–6:00 pm
Artist talk: Friday, September 11, 3:00–3:30 pm
Private Exhibition Preview by appointment: Sunday, September 6 and Monday, September 7
About the Artist
Mitchell Johnson began painting in the late 1970s as a teenager at Staten Island Academy. He earned his MFA from Parsons School of Design in 1990 and also studied painting, drawing, and art history at the Washington Studio School and Randolph-Macon College. His paintings are held in the permanent collections of 40 museums, and he has served as a visiting artist at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, Borgo Finocchieto, and the Sol LeWitt House in Praiano, Italy.
Additional information is available at www.mitchelljohnson.com. Follow Johnson on instagram @mitchell_johnson_artist.
