Lucas Johnson (October 24, 1940 – August 31, 2002) was an American artist and major force in the Texas art scene from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. Largely self-taught, he mastered numerous techniques, including egg tempera, pen and ink drawing, silverpoint, oil and acrylic painting, and the printmaking disciplines of aquatint, etching, lithography, serigraphy, drypoint and mezzotint. He was inspired by politics, music, fishing and the culture of Mexico, where he lived for a decade. His unique vision found expression in a wide range of subjects, from haunting, shamanic beings and quirky aquatic life to enigmatic, volcanic landscapes and still lifes of the orchid species he collected and cultivated.
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Early life
Johnson was born in Hartford, Connecticut on October 24, 1940. At the age of seven, his family relocated to San Gabriel, California. At some point in elementary school, the youngster visited the Huntington Library on a class field trip. This first encounter with serious art, specifically Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy, would shape Johnson's life.
After graduating high school, Johnson enrolled at the University of California-Los Angeles to pursue a degree in marine biology. But, realizing his true calling as that of an artist, he dropped out before his junior year. Johnson traveled widely as a young man, working his way across the country with a series of odd jobs. He taught skiing, herded cattle and harvested wheat, before landing in New Orleans in 1960. By studying books, he taught himself basic art techniques, and then honed his craft making paintings for tourists in Jackson Square. During his stay in New Orleans, Johnson befriended figurative artist George Tooker, who encouraged the young painter to try his hand at egg tempera, Tooker's medium of choice.
Johnson left New Orleans for New York, where he met a group of writers that included poet and editor Daniel Halpern, and the poet Joel Cohen. In 1962, at Cohen's invitation, Johnson accompanied the writer to Mexico City. When Cohen returned to the U.S., Johnson cashed in his return ticket and stayed in Mexico. He would live there for the next ten years.
Career
In Mexico, Johnson immersed himself in the country's humanist and socio-political art traditions, eventually becoming a first-rate artist. His circle of friends included Mexican and expatriate writers, artists, musicians and actors, including poet Margaret Randall, composer Conlon Nancarrow, Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, Sculptor Naomi Siegmann, and humanist draftsman José Luis Cuevas. At the time, Mexico City's avant garde art community was rebelling against its predecessors, the "Big Three" of the mural movement, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Painters of the new generation were looking to widen their horizons by embracing European and American artistic influences. Within a year of his arrival, Johnson was exhibiting in galleries and other venues alongside leading Mexican artists.
Among the sites showcasing his work were the Galeria Sagitario, a co-op, of sorts, and the Galeria de Arte Misrachi, a venue specializing in Mexican "Old Masters." Initially, Johnson exhibited only drawings, which were lauded as the product of a consummate draftsman. He would start showing his paintings in 1967. They were received with similar enthusiasm.
In the mid-1960s, Johnson made the acquaintance of Dorman and Diane David, a Houston-based brother and sister who owned a rare bookstore and art gallery. Dorman frequently visited Mexico in search of historical documents and Texana. From 1964 until it closed in 1972, David Gallery regularly featured Johnson's paintings and drawings in solo shows.
In 1972, Johnson and his third wife Patricia Covo, a native Mexican of European heritage, returned to the U.S., first to New Mexico and then to Houston, Texas. In Houston's vibrant art scene of the era, Johnson's reputation grew and he rapidly developed a following. Covo Johnson founded a gallery, Covo de Iongh, in 1975. She represented her husband's work, and that of Mexican artists, until the gallery ceased operations in 1978. Johnson signed on with Moody Gallery in 1975. He exhibited there until his death; the gallery still handles his work.
Work
Johnson's oeuvre has been characterized as "imagist", a term that usually refers to a short-lived, early-20th century poetic style. Related to Surrealism, Imagism was advanced by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), among others. Similar to Surrealism, Imagist art, whether written or visual, employs recognizable figures, locations and objects, but juxtaposes them in fantastic or unreal ways, as metaphors.
Mysterious figures, landscapes, as well as aquatic and plant life were all source material and subject matter for Johnson's work. He would focus on one subject for a time, and then move on to the next. Strange characters engaged in ritual or ceremony populated the early paintings. Fantastic marine life, real and imagined, inspired him in the mid-1980s, when he created the Gulf Coast Estuary series. Volcanoes, which he thought of as self-portraits, also surfaced in the pieces of the 1980s. Ten years later, he produced a series of dark symbolic dreamscapes known as Drawings from the Underworld. His final body of work stemmed from a lifelong interest in plant forms, orchids, in particular.
While the meticulous and frequently delicate drawings are rendered in black and gray tones, Johnson's paintings burst with vivid colors: reds, oranges, blues and greens.
Personal life
Johnson married three times. The marriage to first wife, Sharon Johnston, his high school sweetheart, lasted for less than a year and ended before his cross-country trek. His second wife, artist Helen Bickham, was teaching English at Mexico City's Instituto Politécnico Nacional when she and Johnson met. They married in 1964 and divorced in 1971. He met his third wife, former gallerist and Houston Chronicle art critic, Patricia Covo, while she was managing the Galeria de Arte Misrachi in Mexico City. They wed in November 1971. At the time of his death, they had been married nearly 31 years.
Johnson maintained studios in Houston's Montrose neighborhood and then on Columbia Street in Houston Heights. In 1997, the Johnsons bought commercial property in Rockport, Texas, where Lucas intended to build a new primary studio.
He died unexpectedly of heart failure at the age of 61 while fishing with Art Guy Jack Massing at Aransas Pass.
Johnson's ashes were scattered on Copano Bay. A plaque dedicated to his memory is installed on the observation deck at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. It reads, "Lucas Johnson, October 24, 1940-August 31, 2002. Artist, angler, birder, and friend."
Achievements and legacy
Collections
Johnson's work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including:
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas
Houston Airport System, Houston, Texas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, Texas
Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas
Jose Luis Cuevas Museum of Drawings, Mexico City, Mexico
Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Toledo Museum, Oaxaca, Mexico
National Museum, Warsaw, Poland
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Smithsonian Institution, American Graphics Collection, Washington, D.C.
Solo exhibitions
Johnson's solo exhibitions include the following.
Selected group exhibitions
Notable group exhibitions that featured Johnson's work include:
Awards
In 1996, The Art League of Houston named Johnson Artist of the Year. Concurrent with this celebration were three solo exhibitions of his work:
"Texas Artist of the Year", Art League of Houston, Houston, Texas
"Lucas Johnson: A Survey", University of Texas at San Antonio, Division of Art & Architecture Art-Gallery, San Antonio, Texas
"Drawings from the Underworld", Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas
Publications
Lucas Johnson has been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, including a rave posthumous review in the international arts monthly Artforum. In 2006, Houston Artists Fund published a 183-page hardbound book, The Art and Life of Lucas Johnson, with a preface by acclaimed museum director Walter Hopps and an illustrated chronology by Patricia Covo Johnson.
In the book's opening essay, former Kimbell Museum director Edmund P. Pillsbury sums up the artist's life, "Johnson became a painter to express himself first and foremost as a human being. At its core, his work is a metaphor for the social condition - an expression of an abiding preoccupation with what is human or, conversely, with what reveals a lack of humanity."