Through August 26, 2025, Mitchell Johnson is exhibiting paintings of Paris at Flea Street in Menlo Park, California. Johnson has been visiting the city and painting in France since 1989, when he was a graduate student at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Following his museum retrospective at Musée Villa Les Camélias in Cap D’Ail, France, last summer, Johnson began a new series focused on Parisian views and architecture.
In his own words:
“I did a television interview with MonacoInfo during the museum retrospective in Cap d’Ail, and they asked what I planned to do next, and I blurted out, ‘I think I’m going to rent an apartment in Paris.’ We found a place in the 11th arrondissement, Rue de Nice, with amazing light and large windows that looked out on characteristic Paris rooflines and chimney pots, but also a park and contemporary architecture.
The building facade by our kitchen window changed appearance constantly with a range of soft and harsh Paris light. This singular light had already appeared in a number of my paintings from 2020 to 2024. My frequent walks down to the Seine, crossing the Pont de Sully, watching the river match the green iron railing one day and appear black another, looping through the Luxembourg and coming back through the Marais, I began to see paintings everywhere in places I hadn’t been noticing. I took photos and made occasional drawings. I collaged different times of day into single paintings in order to get the color I was after, but also a calmness to resolve my feelings of being overwhelmed by the city’s appearance.
I had a pop-up exhibit in March in the Marais. Just before giving up the apartment in June, I had a solo exhibit at Galerie Mercier in the 7th, two blocks from where [Edward] Hopper had lived on Rue de Lille in 1906. I rode the metro regularly from Charonne to St. Germaine des Pres delivering things to the gallery, carrying paintings of Paris, but also some of San Francisco, Truro, New York City, and Newfoundland that were made in Paris. The more intimate relationship with Paris opened doors to new color possibilities in everything I worked on. It was a transformative year in which I barely went to the museums, determined to find my own response to the city itself.”
Johnson’s paintings are in the permanent collections of over 35 museums and have appeared frequently in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and WSJ Magazine. They have also appeared in numerous feature films, including The Holiday (2006), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and It’s Complicated (2009). Johnson’s forthcoming exhibition, Twenty Years in Truro, will be on view at Truro Center for the Arts in Massachusetts, September 3–14, 2025. One of his paintings is also included in the show Recent Acquisitions, on view at the Cape Cod Museum of Art through July 23, 2025.
For more information, visit mitchelljohnson.com and follow him on Instagram at @mitchell_johnson_artist.
