David Abel Johnson is the recipient of a National Endowment For The Arts Artists Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Artists Fellowship and a Yaddo Residency. Mr.Johnson has had more than 35 solo exhibitions and over 45 group exhibitions including the Tweed Museum in Duluth (solo), the Bernal Gallery in Chicago (solo), the Forum Gallery in Minneapolis, the Westbroadway Gallery in New York (solo) and many college, university and art center galleries. He is represented in public, corporate and personal collections. In 1980 he retired to paint from teaching as assistant professor and Art Department Chair at Bethel College (now Bethel University), He also taught at the University of Minnesota, Northwestern College (now the University of Northwestern, St. Paul) and Macalester College.
Mr Johnson, a mature artist born in 1944 in Hawlwy Minnesota has worked in Minneapolis since his student days at the University of Minnesota where he received his BFA and MFA both in printmaking. He has since worked in painting--acrylic on canvas and, now for many years, acrylic on paper. As a painterly abstractionist, working extemporaneously, Mr. Johnson's work references architectural and landscape forms with frequent symbolic elements. His printmaking background reveals itself uniquely in various modes of paint application and in the graphic character of his images.
