Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michael E. Johnson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Michael E., appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

The first time I really began to narrow my focus to pursuing art on a deeper level was my Junior year in high school after I stopped playing basketball. I needed a class to fill that sports elective space, so I chose to take an Art 3 class, which was an advanced level art course. Once I got into Art 3, I began to interact with more serious artists which helped me to grow creatively. We began to learn about new mediums like watercolor, acrylic painting and Prisma colors, while also learning new creative processes such as silk screening, linoleum block printing and exhibiting in art competitions in the Greater Houston Area. We also began doing weekly assignments called ” concentrations”, which focused on practicing and growing our skills in a particular area of specialization. I chose to focus on drawing people for my “concentrations”.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I got into art professionally once I went to undergraduate college at Prairie View A & M University. After deciding to major in Art, I quickly found out that the art degree plan that Prairie View provided was in “Advertising Art” or graphic design. Since I was more of an illustrator by trade, I found myself learning about the elements of graphic design, yet I was constantly drawing and airbrushing on canvas like a fine artist or illustrator. At the time, I didn’t realize I was developing 2 different methodologies to creating art at once until I graduated and moved on to the University of Houston where I began to pursue a Fine Arts Degree in Painting. I did a year of post-baccalaureate study in painting at U of H and then I joined their MFA program for a year before I left to pursue other interests. Fortunately, during that time period of the late 90’s, I began to learn about artists like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Shepard Fairey, Barry McGee and Muralists like James Rosenquist that fed my interests to want to create work that drew from their influences. In that era of the 90’s the worlds of graffiti, Hiphop, skateboarding and “Street wear” were just beginning to merge and I began to create work that attempted to blend these elements together. As a Black artist I always enjoyed and appreciated Pop Art, but I honestly had never seen any imagery that reflected my sensibilities or experiences. Consequently, my work began as my attempt to contribute to this genre from a Black perspective. To date, I am most proud of the opportunity to work with and be collected by iconic filmmaker, Spike Lee, who has been a huge creative inspiration for me throughout my years growing up. He is a phenomenal director, activist and pioneer in making films that tell Black stories that would otherwise never get told. I call my brand of paintings “The Chronicles” because they serve as mini “time-capsules” recalling moments in time from my childhood, as well as, pivotal moments in Black history. My idea is to bridge the gaps between the use of pop cultural imagery, visual and spoken language, dates and typography to tell stories like Advertising meets Fine Arts meets History.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The greatest testament I can share about my journey as an artist is that I quit creating art for over 15 years from 1999 until 2015. As I started back pursuing art as a professional, I was completely out of my element and had to learn about a totally new world where technology and art were working hand in hand. As I’ve shared my story of walking away from my professional artist’s aspirations in efforts to earn a more conventional living, I’ve come to find so many other creatives that have ran into the same road blocks. Being a creative can be a tough profession that is highly competitive and is ever changing. As I found myself attempting to revitalize my creative career I found that I had to pick up right where I left off 15 years earlier. I had to jump onto this fast moving conveyor belt and try to catch up to where the world had gone in my absence. I first had to try to get back into the mode of drawing, creating and looking at other creatives’ work for inspiration and ideas to help cultivate a style that would uniquely define me. This process took about 5 years to really develop, and one of my biggest resources was getting on Instagram where I began to find artists from all over the world to connect to and build my artist community from. Social media really helped me to get reacclimated into the culture as a creative.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think one of the biggest challenges for a non-creative to grasp could be not understanding the interconnectedness between the creatives’ need to express themselves as a component of their personal being. In many instances, a creatives’ life and function of being is an all encompassing existence that can’t easily be separated between “business” life and “personal” life. As a creative, you really have to be “ALL IN” on what you’re doing or your work will show your lack of commitment to your craft. Personally, I believe that many of the most well known and appreciated creatives are the ones that cultivated mastery of the “Business of creating” which is a whole separate art form in itself. Once a person can begin to expand their creative range into areas that go beyond merely producing their product or performing their area of gifting, they can begin to enterprise and collaborate with other artists or businesses to reach a wider audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mjohnsonartwork.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjohnson_art/
• Other: Behance: https://www.behance.net/mjohnson_art

Image Credits
The (2) photos with Spike Lee posing with the artwork were originally shot and posted on his Instagram page @officialspikelee