From July 8 through August 29, Flea Street Restaurant in Menlo Park, California, is exhibiting the color- and shape-driven work of Bay Area artist Mitchell Johnson. Titled New Paintings from California, New England and Europe, the show features small paintings completed in Paris in June as well as recent paintings from Cape Porpoise, Maine and Truro on Cape Cod. The diverse range of compositions showcase the artist’s fundamental concerns with color, perception and scale.
Johnson currently works between the San Francisco Bay Area, Paris, and North Truro in order to compare changes in topography, color and light. He uses architecture, landscapes, boats, chimneys, windows, flowers, chairs and figures to make what art historian Peter Selz described in a 2009 Smithsonian Archives of American Art interview as “realist paintings that are basically abstract paintings and abstract paintings that are figurative.”
Johnson’s paintings are in 700 private collections and the permanent collections of 40 museums. They have also appeared in numerous feature films, including The Holiday (2006), It’s Complicated (2009), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and The Family McMullen (2025). Johnson received his MFA in Painting from Parsons School of Design in 1990, where he studied with many former students of Hans Hofmann including Paul Resika, Robert De Niro, Sr., Jane Freilicher, Nell Blaine, and Leland Bell.
September 9-20, he will have a solo exhibition, Twenty-One Years in Truro at Truro Center for the Arts on Cape Cod where he teaches a master color class once a year.
For more information, visit mitchelljohnson.com and follow him on Instagram @mitchell_johnson_artist.
Request a digital catalog by emailing: mitchell.catalog@gmail.com
Flea Street is a long-established farm-to-table restaurant in Menlo Park (Silicon Valley), founded in 1980 by Jesse Cool. It is one of the pioneering restaurants in Northern California emphasizing local and sustainable ingredients, years before that approach became commonplace. It’s open for dinner Tuesday-Saturday.
Request a digital catalog by emailing: mitchell.catalog@gmail.com
