Show Preview | Brett Allen Johnson

Navigating the Western landscape from the walls of a gallery is no small feat, unless you are at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles during their Dust and Spirit show for Brett Allen Johnson this October. The paintings in the exhibition, 20 of Johnson’s immersive desert scenes, radiate a sense of place that only the sun-drenched Western landscape can evoke.

This self-taught, Utah-based artist has been in demand since his debut in 2010 at the 86th annual Spring Salon, a juried show at the Springville Museum of Art that is considered to be one of the most prestigious group shows in Utah. Flash forward to this fall, where his solo show hangs at one of today’s most prominent galleries of Western art, and the significance of his artistic road trip hits home.

The chart to this point began after two years in college, where Johnson had been pursuing a degree in graphic design. When the demands of his young and growing family led him to leave school and work as a carpenter full-time, he leaned into his love of fine art and set out to learn as much as he could in his free time.

Unsure of what direction his art was moving toward, he first worked in abstraction and then drifted to representational art. “When I found Winslow Homer, I saw something in there that really attracted me,” he recalls. A few years later he stumbled on a Maynard Dixon exhibit and knew his path. The years that followed found him reading books such as Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, and even Southwest Art. “It was in those magazine pages that I saw that other artists were doing exactly what I wanted to do,” he recalls.

His biggest lesson, however, was realizing the Renaissance painters he admired weren’t copying a scene in a realistic way but rather bringing something to life that previously didn’t exist. “Once I had this realization, I decided to spend about six months painting without any reference, just trying to create in my studio, and resisting the urge to go look or take a photo,” says Johnson. “At first, I could feel my brain flexing—it was really hard. Yet during this time I found that I could effectively create my own little worlds in these canvases, and could create them to echo a place that I had seen or remembered.”

It was his body of work that evolved from this process that, around 2015, caught the attention of artist Logan Maxwell Hagege, who urged his brother, Beau, owner and director of Maxwell Alexander Gallery, to look at his art. “I didn’t think I was ready, and Beau knew I wasn’t ready, but he kind of threw me in the deep end and said he wanted to see if I could swim, because he saw something there that had potential,” says Johnson. “Beau recognized what I didn’t—and sometimes still don’t—but sometimes really big, meaningful change comes when you have somebody who believes in you.”

When asking what he hopes viewers will see in his recent work—a year in the making—Johnson says that he’s tried to create pathways for the viewer to meander through. “I think in most of my paintings, you can see the broad idea of it right at first, but usually there’s little places to wander, and I want that to be a starting point for some,” he elaborates. “Somewhere for the mind to wander a little bit.”

Claiming to be drawn to “the big, big things outside,” that enveloping largeness is highly present in all of his paintings. From the view of Three Hills in Tule Valley, to towering summer clouds over the desert, Johnson has succeeded in creating his own little world through his expansive canvases. —Doreen Manning 

contact information(213) 275-1060maxwellalexandergallery.com

This story appeared in the October/November 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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