TEDDY JOHNSON:PORTALS: INTERIOR WORLDS AND ITALIAN LANDSCAPES
Teddy Johnson’s recent solo exhibition PORTALS: Interior Worlds and Italian Landscapes (2024–25) at Midtown Row in Williamsburg showcased the artist’s dual exploration of intimate interiors and expansive European vistas. This Matney Gallery-hosted exhibit was structured around two parallel bodies of work: observational plein-air paintings of the Italian countryside and more introspective, internally-imagined scenes. The Italian landscape pieces, created during Johnson’s residencies in Chianti, Italy, capture sunlight and topography with an immediacy that speaks to his background in on-site painting. By contrast, his interior “portals” emerged from memory and metaphor in the studio, reflecting personal themes shaped by life as an artist and parent in the post-pandemic eral.
Valley by Teddy Johnson – one of his Chianti landscape paintings – exemplifies the artist’s observational approach. In works like this, Johnson spends hours immersed in a single vantage point, translating the convergence of light, terrain, and atmosphere onto panel. The gestural brushstrokes and vivid color in Valley convey a sense of place filtered through the artist’s eye; one can discern the influence of post-Impressionist vitality in his handling of paint, honed through en plein air practice. These pastoral scenes are grounded in real landscapes yet remain highly personal – each painting is a record of patient looking, attuned to subtle shifts in nature over time.
In the PORTALS exhibit, Johnson balanced these outward-looking vistas with canvases turned inward. His interior-focused works often center on architectural elements – doorways, windows, and corridors – that invite the viewer into imaginative, dreamlike spaces. There is an architectural influence in how he frames these scenes, yet the content frequently drifts into intuitive abstraction. A painting might feature a familiar domestic space that morphs into what Johnson describes as an “allegorical fever dream” populated by symbolic figures or animals. These pieces maintain a narrative undercurrent: some meditate on the experience of fatherhood and childhood, while others probe “the inside of an idea or dream” as loved ones and circumstances change around him. Johnson conceives of them as visual portals – allegories that strive to bridge “the gaps between what [he] would like to articulate and what [he] can’t”. In blending recognizable interiors with expressive, surreal passages, Johnson moves fluidly between representation and abstraction, a balance he has even lectured on in academic settings.
Moonlight by Teddy Johnson – acrylic on paper, 9×12 in. – exemplifies the artist’s intuitive, allegorical mode. In this nocturnal scene a hare dominates the foreground while a diminutive figure stands under a crescent moon, all rendered in loose, emotive strokes. Such imagery highlights Johnson’s penchant for storytelling through symbolism: the composition reads like a fragment of a fable or a half-remembered dream. The architecture of the scene (a cobblestone path, hinting at a threshold) anchors the fantasy in a tangible setting, echoing the exhibition’s theme of interior worlds. Through an intuitive painting process, Johnson allows these narrative images to unfold organically, resulting in works that feel at once intimate and enigmatic.
At the Midtown Row opening reception for PORTALS, Johnson further illuminated these themes in an artist talk that engaged the community of viewers and collectors. Speaking to attendees, he shared personal anecdotes about painting abroad in Italy and raising a young family – experiences that directly inform his art. The reception itself became an interactive extension of the exhibition: Johnson warmly answered questions and discussed the stories behind certain pieces, fostering a dialogue that demystified his creative process. This approach reflects the artist’s broader commitment to community engagement; in addition to painting, Johnson has worked as a curator and educator, roles through which he actively invites others into the world of art.
Johnson’s background provides a scholarly backbone to his practice. He earned his BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. (Notably, during his studies he spent two semesters in Cortona, Italy – an early link to the Italian landscapes he would later paint.) Now based in Maryland, he serves as the Cade Gallery Director and is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Anne Arundel Community Collegel. In these capacities, Johnson remains steeped in art historical discourse and mentorship, which in turn informs the sophistication of his own work.
Over the past decade and a half, Johnson has built an exhibition record that signals both breadth and growing acclaim. He has mounted solo shows at venues like The American Poetry Museum in Washington, D.C. (2020) and the Linda Matney Gallery in Virginia (2019). His paintings have been featured on Baltimore’s Fox 45 television and in Baltimore Style magazinel attesting to regional recognition. Beyond the East Coast, Johnson’s work has appeared in group exhibitions as far afield as Seoul and Gwangju in South Korea, and he has participated in international art fairs and cultural exchanges. He was an invited artist in Matney Gallery’s forward-looking 2022 group show A Glimpse Into the Future, a testament to the gallery’s confidence in his vision and a prelude to the PORTALS solo project. In addition, Johnson has completed multiple residencies at La Macina di San Cresci in Italy (2022–2024)g deepening his engagement with the Tuscan environment that figures so prominently in his recent paintings.
Johnson’s work has steadily attracted the interest of private collectors and institutions alike. Many of his pieces now reside in private collections, drawn by the artworks’ rich narrative and textural qualities. Meanwhile, galleries and museums have taken note of his evolving practice: from the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia to the Pearl Museum of Fine Art in Houston, his paintings have been included in a variety of public exhibitions. This momentum is bolstered by critical and curatorial support – for instance, Johnson has collaborated with curators on shows in Brooklyn, Baltimore, and beyond and his works often feature in curated projects that emphasize storytelling and cultural memory. Such engagement underscores the scholarly depth in Johnson’s art, even as the work remains accessible and visually captivating to a broad audience of art enthusiasts.
In sum, Teddy Johnson’s profile in A Glimpse Into the Future paints the picture of an artist at a vibrant crossroads of observation and imagination. His PORTALS exhibition at Midtown Row exemplified the thoughtful balance of architectural insight and intuitive abstraction that defines his oeuvre. Blending accessible imagery with layered symbolism, Johnson creates paintings that invite viewers – whether seasoned collectors or casual gallery-goers – to step through the threshold of the canvas and immerse themselves in the worlds within. His trajectory, marked by academic rigor, community engagement, and cross-cultural exploration, positions Johnson as a dynamic presence in contemporary painting, one whose future works will be awaited with anticipation by collectors and curators alike.
A Rolling Interview with Teddy Johnson
Teddy Johnson's paintings play with the traditions of Western Art to explore storytelling, history, perception, and culture. Linda Matney Gallery has showcased the meditative and layered works of this prolific painter since 2011, and he is among several artists the gallery represents who studied at the University of Georgia. We recently caught up with him about his work as an artist and curator in the Baltimore area.
John Lee Matney: So we really enjoy having your work in the exhibit. Please tell us more about the two pieces we are showing in Works on Paper
Teddy Johnson: The two pieces I have up in the gallery were created last summer in Chianti, a region in Italy. And, in particular, this was in La Macina di San Cresci outside of Greve, a community about 10 miles outside of Florence. So I went there last summer for a week, just a week. But it was a residency where I spent really every moment painting. One of the things I wanted to do there was to capture the experience of the space as a way to feed into my paintings at home right now.
So I've been working in many ways from my mind's eye for my other works that I've shown at the Matney Gallery.These are different. Their original intention was to feed into the other work. But something that happened when I was there is I actually got quite excited about the experience of what it means to be in space. So essentially, I was at this sort of Romanesque church and its church buildings and some of these buildings that date back a thousand years that were beautifully situated in the earth and felt pretty timeless. And so I got really interested in watching the light pass through the space and being in tune with how the environment patterns moved around me there. It can be engaging in a space that's been there that long. It gets you thinking about what came before you, what's continuous in the world, and what changes. And, so, you know, every day, these paintings were part of it. I found a spot and spent the day with that spot trying to capture something about it. So one of the images is from the walled garden looking out into the valley below. And another image is underneath, I believe, a chestnut tree looking at one of the buildings of the church. So these are religious buildings, but now they're residential buildings or at least in part so, you know, families have lived in these spaces for I would assume, hundreds of years.
And so they're comfortable in the space. So, you know, the one with the, with the chestnut tree, and I had spent that time watching the light kind of move across the building, but also you could smell the food being cooked inside so you could think about what it is like to live with those spaces. So that's a lot. What was going on in my mind is being in the open air and thinking about place and thinking about that sort of finite moment of being somewhere just entirely different than a painting where I might spend six months or more on a group of paintings where I go into them over and over again. And those paintings capture hundreds of ideas in my mind. They encapsulate many things, but these paintings in the gallery right now are much more encapsulating a moment.
They're one-shot paintings. I've worked with landscape painting throughout my entire career as an artist. I've showcased it in different ways. So, some of the first paintings that I showed at the Matney Gallery were architecture with people interacting with that architecture. Other pieces that I've shown were imagining figures in the space historically. And so that's been something I've been thinking about, but also, as an educator, I teach landscape painting, and that is an open-air class. Plein plan air is the traditional word for it, but I don't necessarily think of it as plein air. I don't think of myself as connected to a particular lineage. I think of it much more as experiential painting and work that's in conversation with all the paintings I do. But there's really something special about being at a place for a finite amount of time and trying to end with a painting that says something about that experience.
John Lee Matney: So you did several during your trip. Did you work on other ideas as well?
Teddy Johnson: I did one every day. So I did one painting on site every day. And then I did two other works that I think happened at night but I painted mostly during the daylight hours, I was really invested in taking advantage of the experience of being there and doing something I couldn't do anywhere else. And then, at night, it was really about trying to bring together the ideas that were coming to me while I was on-site. Because doing a residency is, for me, a form of research. I want something that's gonna feed into my thoughts for the whole year so it was a chance to say, here I am in this space, having a reaction to the space.
I studied twice in Italy previously. It was also a way for me to reconnect with what were the things that were foundational in my understanding of who I am as an artist when I was here as a studentt. So I came back and, for this concise amount of time, it was a chance to process what are the things that are influential in my work here? There are also two small pieces that I finished while I was there that was more about constructive painting, Something from my mind's eye that utilizes the space around me. . And I intend to go back this summer.
