Crossing Livingston County Again

Artist Marilyn Johnson (American, 1927 - 2017)

Date2014-2015

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionsimage: 36 × 40 in. (91.4 × 101.6 cm)
frame: 38 × 41 3/4 × 1 1/2 in. (96.5 × 106 × 3.8 cm)

Credit LineHelen Sheridan Memorial Fund

Label TextA consistent quality of Marilyn Johnson’s (1927-2017) abstractions is the dynamic interplay of shape and color. Less apparent is their basis in nature, with the boldly outlined forms derived from fragments of fleeting scenery. She called these paintings of her latter years “roadscapes.” The term reveals her process and the origins in landscape--in this case observations of the road, trees, and water in the Finger Lakes region of New York. During regular family drives from Kalamazoo to her mother’s home south of Rochester, Johnson began a practice of rapid sketching from the passenger seat. Looking through the rectangular windshield, she made numerous small, square ink drawings in neatly ordered columns like sequential film stills or storyboards. A scene labeled “Avon” (a town in Livingston County, her destination) may have supplied the basic structure of this painting, with elements added from other sketches. In Crossing Livingston County Again, a country road becomes a vertical green shaft flanked by abstracted foliage and lakes in calming greens and blues. From this lower region of fitted, larger forms, we feel an acceleration toward the busier, multicolored layering in the “distance.” The painting retains the spontaneity of the sketches, while enhancing the sense of depth and motion. The final painting is neither a simplification nor an embellishment of a single view along the road. Rather, the roadscape, like memory, is a very individual assemblage of transitory visions and impressions along a greater journey. A well-respected painter of portraits, urban landscapes (especially “house paintings”), and abstractions, Marilyn Johnson was a positive force on the Kalamazoo art scene from the 1970s until she passed away. She exhibited regularly, winning local and state awards. This abstraction and a portrait by Johnson enter the KIA collection as the first acquisitions through the Helen Sheridan Memorial Fund, provided by Sheridan’s husband, David Isaacson. [Collection Highlight]

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