Femi J. Johnson was born in Manhattan, NY and raised in Easton, PA. He channeled his early talent in graphite and charcoal portrait drawing into a creative professional career as a Master Draftsman & Designer. After completing thousands of technical drawings over decades of work, Femi re-directed his creative energy back to the fine arts. He completed a two-year studio program in art at Hudson Valley College in New York State, where his engagement with contemporary and modernist art inspired his emerging studio practice. In 2012 Femi moved back to the Lehigh Valley. Currently, he works out of Expressions Studio and Gallery at 542 Hamilton Street in Allentown, PA. Femi has exhibited extensively across the Lehigh Valley and in Philadelphia, and was represented in Afrocosmologies, the exhibition of works from the Petrucci Family Foundation & Amistad Art & Culture collections at the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT). His work is held in the permanent collections of the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art (Asbury, NJ) and the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland. He has been a featured artist for four years at Allentown Art Museum’s Cocktails and Collecting and was named the Museum’s Artist-in-Residence from November 2018 through July 2019. In May 2016, Johnson was awarded an Allentown Arts Ovation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Arts. Femi remains actively engaged as a teacher, mentor and ardent supporter of the arts community.
Femi has shown regionally and internationally, with work in corporate and private collections. Recent shows include: Gallery On Fourth, Soft Machine Gallery, Rush Arts Philadelphia, Renaissance Mezzanine Gallery, Cedar Crest college Center for Visual Research, Bethlehem House Contemporary Art Gallery, IF Museum/Academy, Lafayette College Experimental Printmaking Institute, and Santa Bannon Fine / Art at ArtsQuest Banana Factory.
Instagram: @femijj
jjfemi@icloud.com
Little Boy Black Paint What You Feel, 30x30, 2019
Blues For A Hip King, 36x36, 2019
