29 Oct Artist Spotlights: Sherry Johnson

Sherry Johnson’s recent paintings of sun-bleached skulls adorned with vibrantly colored flowers — a series she calls “Bones & Blossoms Collection,” epitomized in the painting Santa Fe Bull — breathe new life into the centuries-old artistic genre known as memento mori, literally “remember death.” But instead of focusing on dark thoughts about the fleeting nature of our existence, her realist oils favor life-affirming messages. She says, “I’m hoping these paintings remind people that, though all things will eventually fade away, we should live full lives in the here and now.”

Her choice of subject matter isn’t surprising, considering that she grew up on her family’s fruit farm in Orem, Utah, and regularly went on hikes and camping trips in the nearby Wasatch Mountains. “It was a very outdoorsy life,” she says, “and I just developed a pure love for nature.” She frequently found sun-bleached skulls of animals such as mountain goats and deer, and lots of shed antlers. “It was always fascinating to me to see these relics.” She also developed a love for drawing early on and first tried oils with a paint-by-numbers kit she bought at age 16. “It just called to me.”

Zintkala Owayawa | Oil on Panel | 36 x 36 inches

After graduating from high school, Johnson enrolled in the design department at Utah State, but left before graduating to marry and raise a family. However, she never lost her love of creating art; when her children were grown, she returned to college and graduated from Utah Valley University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2017. She explains, “After painting Impressionism and doing collage, I got very technical, and honed my skills, trying to find my voice, and the realism started flowing. I really had to figure out who I was and what I wanted to paint and what direction I wanted to go.” One of her professors brought in bones for the students to paint; that experience took her to another level, she says.

Santa Fe Bull | Oil on Panel | 36 x 30 inches

Today she lives a fulfilled artistic life, painting in her home studio in Cottonwood Heights, at the base of the Wasatches. Beyond the skulls-and-flowers pairing that has garnered avid attention, she’s been exploring other subjects such as the bird’s nest, which she enlarged in detail in Zintkála Owayawa, Lakota for “the bird’s place of learning,” which she says speaks to the sacred spaces that nurture us, challenge us, and quietly shape who we are. Through her artistic practice, Johnson has found her own sacred space.

Sherry Johnson is represented by Meyer Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Montgomery-Lee Fine Art in Park City, Utah.

Based in Marin County, California, Norman Kolpas is the author of more than 40 books and hundreds of articles. He also teaches nonfiction writing in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.