In This Issue
November 2008
November 2008 | Vol. 5 No. 11
Featured Stories
- Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!
Community Tree Lighting Events Kick Off Holiday Season in the Lowcountry - Hot to Trot?
Create a new Thanksgiving tradition for your family. - Turkey Talk
How to get this year's bird to be the best ever - Don't Stress It
How to get through the holiday hubbub - Time is Money
Even in Difficult Times - French Lessons
- Excuses, Excuses, EXCUSES!
Get Savvy About Your Money Now - Fall Fashion Forecast: Casual Chic
- Friends May Come and Friends May Go...
But the friends that go with you to Little St. Simons Island will be friends forever!
Featured Women
- Deiha Torin
Memory Keeper - Rosemary Smith
A Lowcountry Classic: Darkness to Dawn - Carol Mularz and the Sunscribers
Spreading A Little Sunshine - Mary Fielitz
One From the Heart - Monique McGlynn
Gamblin' On Friendship - Beverley Roberts
Sweet Success - Marva Collins
On A Mission - Patti Catalano Braddock
Family Jewels - Jacqueline O. Rutland
Lending a Helping a Hand
Monthly Reads
- The Muse Is In...
The Modern Day Muse, Muse Song - Fitness
Healthy Heavy Hitters - Ask the Plastic Surgeon
- Pairfect
Where Cheese Meets Wine and Falls in Love... - Green Piece
- It's Delicious
Chicken and Dumplings With Some Oomph... - Suddenly Single
Rise and Shine?
ABOUT OUR COVER ARTIST:
Mandy Johnson, whose childhood drawings of peaches were always hot pink, started her passion early, taking inspiration from the animal menagerie on her family’s Scotland Neck, N.C. farm. Both a college and real world art education at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, got her rolling until she took a brief twenty-year break to seek higher education, teach art to middle school students, and to raise her daughter.
Since 1998, Mandy has returned to her painting passion full-time, conveying her vision of every day life in the south. Her use of negative space, strong sense of design, and figure-to-ground relationships all contribute to the success of her work. The freedom to mold and distort, to create motion and mood, to highlight and compliment by color… these are signature qualities of Mandy’s work.
“It’s interesting to me now to see what’s coming from my brush,” she says, “because when I started working full-time as an artist I painted from photographs and was much more literal. Now I paint solely in my studio and usually on the floor, and it all comes from my imagination. I find that I end up painting a lot of chores,” says Johnson who grew up in a farm family with five children. Shucking corn, shelling peas, making produce signage, playing instruments - you’ll find them all within her oeuvre - but there’s nothing country about her work. An urban styled edge brings her subject matter into the modern world.
It was a serendipitous trip to the beach almost ten years ago that added a whole new world for her discover. “I was bringing my daughter to Atlantic Beach, NC for a summer job at the Coral Bay Club and things just fell into place,” says the then Chapel-Hill based artist. “My daughter said, ‘Mom, you can paint anywhere,’ and I realized that she was right.” Johnson found a home in Morehead City, N.C. with a built-in studio and gallery where she continues to live and work today.
Mandy Johnson is represented locally by Morris & Whiteside Galleries on Hilton Head Island. Be sure to stop by to see a variety of original pieces from her collection or log on to www.mandyjohnson.com.
A portion of this bio is reprinted with permission from NC Boating Lifestyle Magazine.
Mandy Johnson, whose childhood drawings of peaches were always hot pink, started her passion early, taking inspiration from the animal menagerie on her family’s Scotland Neck, N.C. farm. Both a college and real world art education at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, got her rolling until she took a brief twenty-year break to seek higher education, teach art to middle school students, and to raise her daughter.
Since 1998, Mandy has returned to her painting passion full-time, conveying her vision of every day life in the south. Her use of negative space, strong sense of design, and figure-to-ground relationships all contribute to the success of her work. The freedom to mold and distort, to create motion and mood, to highlight and compliment by color… these are signature qualities of Mandy’s work.
“It’s interesting to me now to see what’s coming from my brush,” she says, “because when I started working full-time as an artist I painted from photographs and was much more literal. Now I paint solely in my studio and usually on the floor, and it all comes from my imagination. I find that I end up painting a lot of chores,” says Johnson who grew up in a farm family with five children. Shucking corn, shelling peas, making produce signage, playing instruments - you’ll find them all within her oeuvre - but there’s nothing country about her work. An urban styled edge brings her subject matter into the modern world.
It was a serendipitous trip to the beach almost ten years ago that added a whole new world for her discover. “I was bringing my daughter to Atlantic Beach, NC for a summer job at the Coral Bay Club and things just fell into place,” says the then Chapel-Hill based artist. “My daughter said, ‘Mom, you can paint anywhere,’ and I realized that she was right.” Johnson found a home in Morehead City, N.C. with a built-in studio and gallery where she continues to live and work today.
Mandy Johnson is represented locally by Morris & Whiteside Galleries on Hilton Head Island. Be sure to stop by to see a variety of original pieces from her collection or log on to www.mandyjohnson.com.
A portion of this bio is reprinted with permission from NC Boating Lifestyle Magazine.
