Lois Johnson Biography

Lois Johnson spent her childhood in the misty rolling hills of the Santa Cruz mountains. There she was surrounded by lush green farmland to the east and the majestic pacific coast on the west.  The eyes and mind of this child joyously absorbed the beauty and thus began the arduous journey of becoming an artist,  a landscape/seascape and portrait painter.

As a young adult she moved to the Southwest U. S. where, for the next twenty-seven years, she lived, studied and worked as an artist. The newness of Northern Arizona with its native people inspired her to devote all her time and energy learning to know and paint portraits of the Hopi and Navajo people and their lovely children. Her work was recognized by collectors of southwest artfrom the 1960’s through the 1980’s . Lois is included in ContemporaryWestern Artists, Who’s Who in the West and Who’s Who in America.

She studied with many highly respected artists including; Donald Puttman, Wilson Hurley, Bettina Steinke, Charles Movalli, John Sanden, George Carlson, Richard Goetz and Gregg Kreutz of Art Students League, N. Y., and above all Clair Fry and Ben Stahl, who were considered masters of the generation of Norman Rockwell, N.C Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish.

In 1987 the sea, the landscapes of rolling hills and verdant truck farms called her to return to California to record her as yet unpainted childhood memories,not as she remembered them, but as if, through the eyes of her most esteemed mentors - Cezanne, Sisley, Monet and Bonnard. She traveled along the coast in her small RV in the late 1980’sand 1990’s painting “en plein aire”.
In 1995, at a workshop with Charles Movalli, she “found” her soulmate painting (inconspicuously but in a white heat of ferocious concentration) behind a barn apart from the rest of the class. Ron Grauer.  It was his masterful influence that solidified her approach to the California landscape.

WORKS HELD:
• Collection of E.M. Estes,
  President of General Motors
• Arden Firestone, Firestone Tire
• L.R. Peterson, Johnson’s Wax
• Davis Factor, Max Factor
• Valley National Bank
• Vertex Management, Inc.
• “Desert Caballeros Western Museum”
  in Wickenburg, AZ
• U.S. Department of Justice

SHOWS / EXHIBITIONS:
• Exhibited in major U.S. galleries
  for thirty-five years
• Honored at a Congressional reception in
  Washington D.C., where she received a
  SILVER AWARD from the National Gallery
  of Art, Washington, D.C. This work was
  presented for display at Ellis Island.
• Georgetown University Gallery
• Port History Museum
• Atlanta-Fulton County Library
• Trans America Tower of San Francisco
• Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
• Dallas City Hall
• John F. Kennedy Museum and Library
• Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
• State University of New York
• Gallery Ocean Avenue, Carmel, CA
  Solo exhibition, 2002
• CaliforniaView Fine Arts, Los Gatos, CA
  "Their California" exhibition, 2003
• “Big Sur Land Trust Invitational Plein Air Show”,
   New Master’s Gallery, Carmel, CA 2004
• CaliforniaView Fine Arts Exhibition, Spring 2005

Today, she shares a studio with husband, Ron Grauer, in the Santa Cruz mountains where they continue to paint in their much loved but crowded little studio.