Artist profile
Anna Elise Johnson
A Los Angeles–based contemporary artist whose layered works consider the images and histories that shape how a landscape is understood.
- Based in
- Los Angeles, California
- Born in
- Starnberg, Germany
- Raised in
- Colorado Springs, Colorado
Biography
Johnson moves between painting, printmaking, and an expanded image practice, drawing together references that arrive from different places and times.
Born in Starnberg, Germany and raised in Colorado Springs, she earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis. After working in Berlin, Johnson returned to the United States for an MFA at the University of Chicago, where she studied with William Pope.L, Laura Letinsky, and Geof Oppenheimer.
Selected background
- Education
- BFA in Painting and Printmaking, Washington University in St. Louis; MFA, University of Chicago.
- Berlin
- Worked as an assistant to Julie Mehretu, supporting the Deutsche Guggenheim exhibition and Mehretu’s Mural for Goldman Sachs in New York.
- Fellowship
- Core Fellowship, Glassell School of Art, Houston.
- Exhibitions
- More than twenty group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including India, Slovenia, and Germany; solo presentations in Chicago, Berlin, Dallas, Denver, and at the Blaffer Museum in Houston.
Practice
“I am interested in the ways images shape ideology, politics, and our understanding of the landscape.”
Through layering and juxtaposition, Johnson disrupts familiar visual hierarchies. Her recent work examines the nature/culture divide and considers how art can help reimagine a relationship to the world and its complex histories in the Anthropocene.
View available artwork