Gray days and backlit city commutes. Details blown out as last light dips behind manmade horizons. Bodies and skylines, more composites of city life than a portrait of any one person or place. Perhaps best known for these spare street scenes, Geoffrey Johnson, in his upcoming show at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, riffs off ideas familiar and new.
Billy Boy, oil on board, 24 x 36"
Rendered with a push and pull of impasto and watercolor-like washes, Johnson explores luxe interiors and European landmarks alongside rodeos, and scenes from sidewalk to sea. “Subject matter for me is just pretty random,” Johnson explains, pointing to new work he created from a trip to California’s Central Coast. “I would have never thought I would have painted from California,” he says. “I didn’t think I would be inspired—I’m not painting the landscape very much.”
Seeing Johnson’s cityscapes, you might assume he’s from New York or, possibly, Europe. Surprisingly, Johnson, who lives in North Carolina, “is sort of a Southern gentleman as opposed to an urbanite or a guy from New York City,” says Principle Gallery director Clint Mansell.
Rome III, oil on board, 24 x 36"
With a working relationship spanning 18 years, Johnson is one of the gallery’s longest-standing artists. “He is one of the most popular artists that we represent,” says Mansell, noting how gallery visitors gravitate toward his work. “He’s one of the artists that people stop by [to see] every time they come in.”
Toggling between thin, stain-like areas and zones of thick paint, sometimes applied with a scrap of cardboard or scratched into with the handle of a brush, Johnson’s work is at once intimate and composition forward.
Hotel Bar, oil on board, 40 x 30"
“His design sense is sort of at the forefront of all of his paintings,” Mansell continues. “The way he places figures among abstracted backgrounds or cityscapes or interiors, the relationship between the figure and the environment, I think, is one of the most important things in his work and how that person relates to it,” he says.
Inspired by later works of George Inness and the tonalist movement, Johnson’s once-tight style quickly evolved into “more of an impression” of what he was painting, the artist says. Works like Billy Boy, a nearly monochromatic boat scene, share the same directness and economy of watercolor or India ink, while Johnson’s interiors, rendered in brushy, rich color, land somewhere between Elmer Bischoff and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Market in Rain, oil on board, 24 x 18"
“Less is more,” Johnson says. “If it’s not a little off in some way, it kind of loses its life, loses its effectiveness.” While he could do it all, Johnson doesn’t. Perhaps there’s power in the stroke held back or the thing left unsaid.
Approximately 20 of Johnson’s new paintings are on view at Principle Gallery in Alexandria from May 16 through June 9, with a reception on opening night from 6 to 8:30 p.m. —
Principle Gallery 208 King Street • Alexandria, VA 22314 • (703) 739-9326 • www.principlegallery.com
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