Monthly Archives: April 2011

Join “The Artist’s Eye” author Janis Johnson at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, California, on April 30 from 1:30 to 2:30 pm for an informal “meet and greet” session. That’s 140 Kentucky Street in historic downtown Petaluma. We’ll talk small towns, the … Continue reading →

While surveying the Pablo Picasso exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts last week, I was thinking about what two artists –Vernon Johnson, my relatively traditional Ohio-born father, and Pablo Picasso, the European hedonist of ceaseless experimentation, had in … Continue reading →

I returned to my hometown after more than 45 years — and wrote this book, The Artist’s Eye: Vernon P. Johnson’s Watercolors of 1950s Small Town America. You couldn’t find a more typical small town in America in the 1950s, … Continue reading →

Jazz musician Dave Brubeck’s 1958 State Department tour to India sparked the second chapter in the long and storied life of “Calcutta Bazaar,” an amazing watercolor painted by my father, Vernon P. Johnson from firsthand experience in 1946.  Twelve years later, Dad … Continue reading →