New exhibit awash in Mediterranean color

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

An impromptu trip to Italy gave artist Susan Johnson the subject matter for paintings she will display through September at the Benicia Plein Air Gallery.

And some credit, she said, must go to singer Andrea Bocelli.

Watching the Italian tenor on KQED in May, Johnson was struck by an urge to return to Italy, where she hadn’t been since a trip in the mid-1960s.

“During the pledge break I went back to my computer and looked for hotels,” Johnson said. “It’s a big birthday year for me, so I’m celebrating all year.

“Carpe diem is the byword.”

Johnson and her husband, Doug, spent about three weeks in Italy, giving her ample opportunity to take photos and sketch references for the oil paintings she would create when she returned.

The result: “Portofino, Burano and Bellagio,” Johnson’s exhibit that will be displayed for most of September at Benicia Plein Air Gallery, where she is that month’s featured artist.

Reflecting on her trip months later, Johnson was still eager to talk about the places that inspired the new exhibit.

“It was thrilling to go to the island of Burano,” she said Thursday. “I don’t know why, but they have painted all of the buildings bright, shocking colors: hot pink, bright purple, bright turquoise. All the little town is like that.

“We spent a lot of time there, photographing, painting, and sitting in a little café and listening to the local men sing opera to one another. … It was wonderful.”

Bellagio was a return trip — Johnson went there as a college student on her one previous visit. But despite the intervening years, she said, little has changed.

“It had been 40 years or something, but I went to the hotel I stayed at in the ’60s, and the man (who ran the hotel) wasn’t there, but his grandson was, and he was running the hotel,” she said.

“So we chatted about the old days and such. Bellagio looked very much like it had in the ’60s, it hadn’t changed much.”

Portofino was her favorite town to paint because it was “surprisingly intimate and relaxed,” or as she said in an email announcing her exhibit, “There was a range of warm tones on the buildings, salmon, yellow ochre, buff, pale orange, violet, most with deep green shutters.”

Most of the paintings are in oils, Johnson’s preferred medium, rendered from the sketches and photos she brought back from her trip. A couple were painted while she was in Italy.

The work ties in with one of her influences, Henri Matisse. “He said, ‘I paint what I feel, not what is there, or what I see,’” she said.

A Sept. 14 reception for Johnson’s show coincides with the Art Walk and the Wine Walk. Nothing could be better as far as Johnson is concerned.

“Last time we had the Wine Walk it was wonderful, so many people came through,” she said.

If You Go
“Portofino, Burano and Bellagio” will run Sept. 5-29. An artist’s reception is Sept. 14 from 5-7 p.m. at the Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First St.