Brian Johnson received a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from California State University Chico in 2015.
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Brian Johnson is a passionate artist, known for abstracting reality.  His work all originated from snapping photos of  reality.  Unlike most abstract artists, he doesn’t start from a blank slate.  Brian’s work has a distinct and unusual process, but he does not intend for the process of his work to be its narrative.  Instead, Brian is goal oriented while working on art, which is unusual given that he is more often a process-first-centered-thinker.  Brian is open to experimenting in order to reach surprising and interesting enigmatic artistic ends.  Brian’s abstract work pursues the 400+ year old philosophical art term: the sublime.

What is the Sublime?

The sublime was a prominent art term and visual pursuit, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries.  However in it’s heyday, the sublime was pictorially sought through naturalistic landscape paintings. Products which are very different from Brian’s abstract work.In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublīmis) is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.

Brian feels that an abstract approach to the sublime only makes sense given how subjective measurable emotions can be.  Let alone immeasurable emotions.