An exhibition highlighting Stephen Johnson and Karen Matheis’ body of work will be on view at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art from Saturday, April 23 until Sunday, June 12, 2022.

These exhibitions will take place in tandem with the 6th annual National Undergraduate Juried Exhibition.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 22, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available. Masks are requested of all visitors in the museum while not actively eating and drinking.

About Stephen Johnson

This exhibition will be a mix of artwork from Stephen Johnson’s collection and his own work to explore how is influenced by the art around him. Stephen T. Johnson’s figurative work spans a 38-year career, beginning with an academic charcoal figure study made in the mid-1980s at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, France and followed by personal works and commissioned illustrations for nationally published magazines, record companies, and award-winning children’s books. This exhibition pairs and contrasts artwork from his personal collection, including a 17^th-century portrait of King Charles II from the studio of Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674), important drawings and paintings by Symbolist artists Eugène Carrière (1849-1906) and Otto Greiner (1869-1916), works by two Guggenheim Fellows, John Theodore Johnson (1902-1963), the artist’s grandfather, and the iconic 20^th-century caricaturist David Levine (1926-2009), plus present-day masters of interpreting, depicting, and rendering with paint, the human form.

Stephen T. Johnson’s visually arresting and conceptually rich body of work forges connections between words, objects, and ideas. His art spans a broad range of concepts and contexts and can be seen in site-specific public art commissions, gallery and museum exhibitions, and original award-winning children’s books such “Alphabet City,” a Caldecott Honor and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year.  

His drawings and paintings are in numerous private collections including those of musician Paul Simon and actress Cherry Jones, and are in the permanent collections of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, and the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.  

Among his public art is a 66-foot mosaic mural at the DeKalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn New York, a 58-foot mosaic mural at the Universal City/Studio City Metro Station in Los Angeles, California, and 33 glass panels for the Dallas Love Field Airport, in Dallas, Texas. 

Please find him online at www.stephentjohnson.com and www.instagram.com/stj_art/

About Karen Matheis

Karen Matheis is an oil painter inspired by the landscape near her home in Lawrence, Kansas. Matheis’ work is abstracted bird’s eye views of the land. Her work focuses on how human-made infrastructure reflects the patterns of the natural world. Her artwork can be seen in private and corporate collections nationwide. 

Of her series, Piece Work/Peace Work on display in the exhibition, Matheis writes, “I created the paintings in this exhibition in response to the stress associated with the pandemic and essential work status. Patchwork landscape evolved with the concept of a quilt as a source of comfort and symbolic of home and family.”