Lucia Johnson used to check out art books by the dozen from the Greenville Public Library in South Carolina. She’d copy the masters in pencil and charcoal and post them up all over her bedroom walls in between classic and alternative rock posters. She attended the Fine Arts Center High School program then the now defunct Atlanta College of Art and Design and then back to South Carolina to graduate from USC with a bachelor’s degree in Art. “All I ever wanted to do was get the hell out of the south,” she confides. She moved to Portland, Oregon in 2001. 

Lucia has a degree in Art from the University of SC where she majored in jewelry making and minored in paper making and never took even one painting class. Not even color theory. And now all she does is paint….

She is interested in elements of the natural world, Pacific NW landscapes particularly, and her children. She frequently manipulates nature to suit her decorative whims and often implants her children, “for humanity”, she says. The majority of the time she purposely obscure their faces so that others can share in the emotional experience more easily by imagining children of their own. Her work could understandably be described as sentimental, but, she says, “I try to insert a small amount of that human reflection and even melancholy into some of my pieces.” 

In her most detailed pieces she layers glass, acrylic sheets and wood to make dimensional works. She often uses whatever is at hand to keep from wasting materials. 

Her work has shown all over Portland, Seattle, Astoria, Hillsboro and Hood River.