Stephanie Johnson : Ten Paintings and Murals

  
Stephanie Johnson, a Tucson, Arizona resident of four years, is an artist and teacher inspired by the life forms of both the Sonoran desert and Atlantic coast’s Outer Banks.

She received her B.S. in art in 1992 from James Madison University in Virginia, after a painstaking switch from majoring in biology.

Stephanie taught high school art in the Shenandoah Valley for five years before leaving to stay home with her now eight-year-old son, Zane. While a stay-at-home mom, the artist began painting commissioned murals for various businesses in Virginia.

Artist Stephanie Johnson.

Since moving to Tucson, she continues to create her own art as well as commissioned art in the forms of murals, paintings on canvas, sculpture, and commercial illustrations. Stephanie’s work can be found in various private homes and businesses, including the Community of Civano’s neighborhood center, Body & Soul, and several magazines and books. She also teaches art classes to the students of Civano elementary and middle schools in the Vail School District. Stephanie currently has her head in the books as she works toward getting back into teaching either art or biology full time.

Many personal interests and experiences shape the artwork of Stephanie Johnson. Although she was raised in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, it was her family’s frequent trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina that most generated her curiosity in the world of small living things. The instant her dad taught her how to scoop burrowing, alien-looking “sand fleas” (mole crabs, actually; a relative of shrimp) she was hooked on the enigmatic minutiae. The deaths of Stephanie’s parents when she was just out of college, as well as the untimely death of a sister several years later, heightened her appreciation of the mysteries of living and of living things. It is this passion that inspires Stephanie to create the images she does. Basically, art is what she does, but biology is what she loves.

Like many visual artists, Stephanie finds it challenging to talk about her art. She would like to believe that her work is successful enough as a visual language to stand on its own before the viewer. However, she can say that, artistically, she tends to focus mostly on organic forms, unusual (perhaps surreal) juxtapositions, and arbitrary colors. Though Stephanie’s work often contains many secret personal memories and symbols, she hopes that others—taking the time to consider her art—would find their own individual thoughts and memories automatically stirred. Additionally, she desires to give a general sense of the beauty and sacred value of often-overlooked or perhaps even misunderstood forms of life, as well as a sense of humankind’s similarity to these other, seemingly disparate creatures.