Johanson's art is concerned with memory and recollection, dream and fantasy, biography and autobiography, physical and imaginative detachment yet sensual engagement. He is also the painter of fires that break out in city buildings or spew from volcanoes, and he often sets fire's rampage alongside human lassitude and seeming indifference.
George Johanson-painter, printmaker, and teacher-was born in Seattle, studied art in Portland, Oregon, in the late 1940s, and lived in New York in the early 1950s. His work focuses on bathers, swimmers, artists, and street scenes and vistas of Portland. He is also the painter of fires that break out in city buildings or spew from volcanoes, and he often sets fire's rampage alongside human lassitude and seeming indifference.