From July 8 through August 29, Flea Street Restaurant in Menlo Park, California, is presenting the color- and shape-centered work of Bay Area artist Mitchell Johnson. Titled New Paintings from California, New England and Europe, the exhibition includes small paintings made in Paris in June, along with recent works from Cape Porpoise, Maine and Truro on Cape Cod.
The varied group of compositions highlights Johnson’s longstanding interest in color, perception and scale. He works between the San Francisco Bay Area, Paris, and North Truro to compare shifts in topography, color and light.
Johnson uses architecture, landscapes, boats, chimneys, windows, flowers, chairs and figures to create what art historian Peter Selz, in a 2009 Smithsonian Archives of American Art interview, called “realist paintings that are basically abstract paintings and abstract paintings that are figurative.” His paintings are held in 700 private collections and in the permanent collections of 40 museums.
His work has also appeared in numerous feature films, including The Holiday (2006), It’s Complicated (2009), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and The Family McMullen (2025). Johnson earned his MFA in Painting from Parsons School of Design in 1990, where he studied with many former students of Hans Hofmann, including Paul Resika, Robert De Niro, Sr., Jane Freilicher, Nell Blaine, and Leland Bell.
September 8-20, Johnson will present a solo exhibition, Twenty-One Years in Truro, at Truro Center for the Arts on Cape Cod, where he teaches a master color class once a year. For more information, visit mitchelljohnson.com and follow him on Instagram @mitchell_johnson_artist. Request a digital catalog by emailing: mitchell.catalog@gmail.com.
Flea Street is a long-established farm-to-table restaurant in Menlo Park (Silicon Valley), founded in 1980 by Jesse Cool. It is one of the pioneering restaurants in Northern California emphasizing local and sustainable ingredients, years before that approach became commonplace. It is open for dinner Tuesday-Saturday.
