'Oberon, Series 1' by Barbara Johnson, Instituto Allende, Carmel Art Association, National Association of Women Artists, La Jolla

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Signed lower right, 'Barbara Johnson' (American, 1927-2021) and titled, lower left, 'Oberon Series 1'.
Exhibited: Carmel Art Association, circa 1995 … Read more Signed lower right, 'Barbara Johnson' (American, 1927-2021) and titled, lower left, 'Oberon Series 1'.
Exhibited: Carmel Art Association, circa 1995 (accompanied by original label)

Abstract painter and printmaker, Barbara Johnson was born and raised in Auburn, a small town just outside of Worcester, Massachusetts. As a young girl, Johnson was introduced to art and would make the seven-mile walk from Auburn to the Worcester Art Museum with her sister. After attending the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida (1946-1948), she transferred to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts where she graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. Smith College happened to be a training ground for the WAVES, the women’s branch of the Navy. Seeing an opportunity to travel, Johnson enlisted and was commissioned as an Ensign. While serving, she met her husband Jim, also in the Navy. They married in 1954.

By the time Johnson enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the couple had two young children at home. Johnson immersed herself in studio art (painting, printmaking and drawing) and art history. She remembers that by the time she turned 30, “Realism was considered old hat. This was the era of Hans Hoffman, Mark Rothko, and Richard Diebenkorn. That’s when I shifted in the direction of Abstract Expressionism. They were my greatest influences.”

From the University of Michigan, Johnson received her Bachelor of Arts and two Master of Fine Arts degrees (1954-1959), developing a distinctive, harmonious style in both printmaking and oil compositions on canvas, evoking landscapes from an aerial view in both mediums. She intentionally utilized strong and muted color palettes with equal success; and with her monoprints, she combined oil-based inks with textural materials as diverse as pieces of wood, plastic, cardboard, metal, cloth, linoleum, string, gift wrap, newsprint, gum wrappers, collage elements, and, as Johnson put it, “any darn thing that seems to work” to create abstracted, birds-eye-view geographies from within her interior world.

Moving to the Monterey Peninsula in 1969, Johnson taught junior high school art classes. Late in 1972 she studied painting at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato State, Mexico. Then she lived for five years in Asia where Jim was assigned as U.S. Fishery Attaché for the Far East, stationed in Japan. The cultural inspirations from this period of time overseas would figure very large as motifs and markings in Barbara’s work for the rest of her life. Barbara and Jim returned to the United States in 1981; and with his support, Barbara decided to open an art gallery. The economics of California’s Central Coast did not look as promising as prospects in Cape Cod, so they moved East and operated a seasonal gallery there for six years.

In 1988, they relocated to California for a second time and Johnson juried into the Carmel Art Association that same year with a series of woodblock prints. Her preferred subject matter continued to be non-objective abstraction. Often working simultaneously on three large canvases perched upon three easels, she first played with geometric shapes and patterns to establish order which she then disrupted and dissolved with gestural brush strokes or the palette knife of a devoted expressionist.

Johnson was a member of the National Association of Women Artists in New York and the California Society of Printmakers. Her lengthy exhibition list in both printmaking and oil painting mediums dates back to 1987 in New York City and includes over one hundred solo and group museum and gallery shows from coast to coast and around the globe over the next three and a half decades. Johnson exhibited at the Newport Beach Museum, Long Beach Museum Annuals, La Jolla Museum, the Fine Art Gallery of San Diego Annuals, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, among others. She was the recipient of numerous prizes, medals and juried awards including from the Richmond Museum, the Association of Western Artists and the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Her work was selected for inclusion in the Traveling Printmaking Exhibition USA from 1987 to 1989 as well as for the renowned Art and Embassies program.

*With thanks to the Carmel Art Association -
Compiled using interview material and assistance from Curatorial Advisor Helaine Glick, journalists Dennis Taylor and Lisa Crawford Watson, gallerist Christopher Winfield, and CAA Artist Member Andrea Johnson. See less