Homer Johnson:
Dappled Light
July 10 – August 15, 2021
Opening Saturday, July 10, 12-7pm
Reception, 5-7pm
Work available online
Homer Johnson, Reaching, 1980
The French philosopher Henri Bergson said that life’s essence is in the movement by which it is transmitted. I agree with this idea. My work has always been involved with movement, gesture, and light. If I can still feel the gesture at the end of the painting process, I feel that I have succeeded. The essence of what I am searching for is in the movement. Light plays an important role in my work as well, by illuminating the movement. My work often involves figure groupings, such as mother and child themes or dancer themes. These ideas have been filtered through memory and reconstructed in the present. My years in Vermont have shown me that the same search for light and movement can be generated by landscape painting.
~Homer Johnson (1925-2020)
See Homer Johnson’s lovely memorial website and view available work
Homer Johnson, who died in September 2020, was an artist who painted not only what he saw, but what he felt and understood about people and their natural surroundings. An instructor of painting and drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for 40 years, Homer shared with students his well-honed sensitivity toward light and space and movement. He also taught at the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, and at Atlantic Community College in New Jersey.
Educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Barnes Foundation, Homer began his artistic journey at a technical high school, learning draftsmanship and technical drawing. Soon after graduating he was drafted into the Army Corps of Engineers, where he was shipped off to the Philippines and his skills were employed making maps for the war effort in the Pacific. After the war, he attended the academy and was awarded a Cresson Fellowship to travel to Europe and see the works of masters he had only known from black and white photos. He spent a few years in commercial art, designing boxes for chocolate bunnies and the like, before joining the faculty at the academy and dedicating his life to fine art.
Homer loved taking walks in the Vermont woods, or just gazing out the window, and drew inspiration from the dappled light and forms he found in nature. His work, focusing mostly on figurative works and nature studies, is widely acclaimed for its lyrical quality and depth. He received numerous awards for his paintings, including the Percy Owens Memorial Award for a Distinguished Pennsylvania Artist and the Dean’s Award from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
In 2001, Homer was selected for participation in a Senior Artists Initiative, which supported cataloging his art and producing a video interview on his life’s work. His work has been included in many group and individual shows, in Philadelphia and Vermont, and is represented in the collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, Smith Kline in Philadelphia, and the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, as well as numerous private collections.
Homer experimented with many media while a student at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, starting with copious cast drawing. “In those days you just did cast drawing day after day until you got it right. It was pretty exhausting.” He cites artist and instructor Julius Bloch as an important influence, and gravitated toward acrylics and watercolors. “Watercolor means spontaneity, vitality, and transparency. Even in oil and acrylic, I tried to move from opaqueness to transparency.”
