Rae Johnson Biography

Rae Johnson was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1953. She attended the New School of Art in Toronto from 1975-76 and later graduated from the Ontario College of Art (OCA) where she won the Forsyth Award for painting in 1980. She began teaching at OCA in 1987 and became an associate professor in the Drawing and Painting Department in the Faculty of Art. She was an advisor in the Masters Programs IAMD (Interdisciplinary Art Media Design) and CCP (Criticism and Curatorial Practice). Rae Johnson began exhibiting her work internationally in 1978. She was a co-founder of the seminal artists’ collective ChromaZone which spearheaded the figurative paintings movement of the 1980s. Rae was active within the organization as co-director and curator. ChromaZone produced hundreds of exhibitions from 1981 to 1986.

Rae was represented by Carmen Lamanna Gallery from 1983 until his death in 1991. She has been represented by the Christopher Cutts Gallery since 2015. Her first show with the Cutts Gallery was an exhibition with artist Lorne Wagman, in 2010. Internationally, Johnson has shown at the 49th Parallel in New York City, 1983; Galerie Walcheturm in Zurich, 1986; as part of O KromaZone in West Berlin, 1982; and in a show called Bambine Miracolo at the Canadian Culture Centre in Rome, 1993. Her work was featured in Toronto Painting ‘84 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 1985 she won the gold award from the Chicago International Film Festival for poster design for the documentary film about the AIDS epidemic, No Sad Songs. In 2011, Rae curated an exhibition about the 1980s Queen St. West art scene called This is Paradise at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto). The next year, in 2012, she curated an exhibition titled Toronto/Berlin 1982-2012 at Zweigstelle
Berlin, Germany. Her work was included in an exhibition of historical Toronto art titled This is Paradise at the University of Toronto, 2016.

Johnson received numerous Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants. Her work is in museums and corporate collections across Canada. Her work can also be found in many private collections including those of writers Michael Ondaatje and Linda Spalding, film producer Robert Lantos, actor Graham Greene and the Frum family.

Toronto columnist Donna Lypchuk has written “Rae Johnson, a founding member of the 1980s collective of painters called ChromaZone, is known for her vibrant landscape paintings of Flesherton, Ontario, as well as her brutally honest and sometimes controversial excavations into the interior landscape of the female psyche.”