Fuji - Sun and Moon

Barbara L. Johnson

A later-career piece, "Fuji - Sun and Moon", exhibits informed and elegant simplicity, revealing Johnson's mastery of the printmaking medium in relation to Abstract Expressionist aesthetics. Johnson's exploration of Abstract Expressionism began early in her art career, pursuing her art degree as the genre began to dominate the American art world. Further studies on her own while living in Japan cemented her style, as she embraced a muted color palette that borrowed from the natural world and was inspired by the modernism emerging in the Japanese art world.

Barbara Johnson lived in Japan from about 1976 to 1981, while her husband was stationed at various port cities as a U.S. Fishery attache. This period of time greatly influenced her style, as she left behind representational compositions in favor of the purely abstract. In this piece she depicts Mt. Fuji crowned by a celestial orb - whether the sun or the moon is up to the viewer - and a backdrop of textures coaxed forth by a variety of overlapping media.

To print "Fuji - Sun and Moon" she composed a nearly topographical composition, like the quilted agricultural landscapes of the globe, perhaps borrowing inspiration from her early education in geography at Smith College.

Barbara Louise Johnson was born in Auburn, Massachusetts on November 10, 1927. An early interest in art led her to the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida for the school years 1946-1948. However, she was discouraged from pursuing an art degree and recieved a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Smith College in Northampton, MA in 1950. Johnson then attended the University of California, Berkeley in 1951, before joining the Navy's WAVES branch for women in Massachusetts, seeing an opportunity to travel the world. While enlisted, she met and married her husband, Jim.

Between the years 1954 and 1959, Johnson returned to art, studying at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she received her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees in studio art. It has also been stated at Johnson studied painting at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and printmaking at the University of Nebraska Printmaking Workshop in Florence, Italy. In 1969 the Johnson's moved to the Moneterey peninsula in California, where among the exhibitions she participated in were the Monterey County Fair in 1972 and had a solo exhibition at the Tantamount Gallery in Carmel Valley in 1974.

She experimented with figurative painting but was never interested in traditional landscape or still life painting. 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."

When Jim was sent to serve as a U.S. Fishery attache in Japan, Barbara went with him, and they remained there for five years, a period of time that greatly influenced Barbara's art. They returned to the United States in 1981, and with Jim's support, Barbara decided to open an art gallery. At the time, due to the economic situation of the central California coast, the Johnsons saw more opportunity for success in Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, so they moved East and operated a seasonal gallery there for six years. Eventually, weary of the brutal winters, they returned to California in 1988. Barbara juried into the Carmel Art Association that same year on the strength of a series of woodblock prints, and quickly established herself as a part of the local art scene.

Barbara L. Johnson died in California on May 14, 2021.