Principle Gallery | 5/13-5/30 | Alexandria, VA

Monochromatic City

Geoffrey Johnson paints Midtown from memory at a new show at Principle Gallery.

When Geoffrey Johnson entered his first painting class at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, he opened up his watercolors, ready to learn. “The teacher came by and said, ‘Those are nice, but come back to class when you have some oil paints,’” he remembers. “It really pushed me out of my comfort zone. It was the best advice I ever got.”Interior with Portraits, oil on board, 30 x 40"After he graduated, Johnson went to New York City and made his way up and down Madison Avenue with 35-millimeter slides of his work to show to galleries. “My philosophy was that you should start at the top and work your way down,” he says. “What have you got to lose? I went to the biggest galleries in New York and showed my slides to everybody in Midtown.”

Around 25 years ago, he connected with Principle Gallery, and his work will be displayed there in a solo show that opens May 13 and runs through May 30. The paintings on view will include urban scenes, interiors and coastal works.Park Avenue, oil on board, 20 x 16"

“I still can’t get the city out of my system,” Johnson says. “I tend to get bored easily. I don’t like getting bogged down and I move onto new things pretty quickly, so it’s kind of amazing to me that I’ve been able to paint the city for this long.”

He knows New York so well at this point that he often paints scenes based on his memories of the city, including Midtown Corner. “I love the limited palette of the city,” he says. “I see the surroundings as being almost monochromatic.”West Side, oil on board, 40 x 30"Although there are people present in many of these cityscapes, they are depicted in sparse detail. “I keep the figures silhouetted and the architecture limited as well because the paintings are not about those things,” Johnson says. “They are more based on the feelings one gets from the city. Each painting is a thousand different decisions, thoughts and feelings.”Midtown Corner, oil on board, 34 x 44"Now living in North Carolina, Johnson spends much of his time on the beach and has incorporated coastal scenes into his repertoire. Low Tide depicts a beach he often visits with his wife.

Interior Portraits is a scene from his imagination, inspired by time spent among historical architecture in Savannah and Charleston. Johnson says, “My wife and I have friends who live in one of the very old houses in Savannah, and it’s so interesting to see those interiors and visit other houses in the area.”—

Principle Gallery
208 King Street • Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 739-9326 • www.principlegallery.com