Buena Johnson – A Passionate Soul’s Cry

Buena Johnson creates powerful art that is rich in story; intimate, vital work that has the quality of a resonant dream. Johnson says of her trajectory as an artist, “Art became my best friend, my peace, my consolation, escape, and safety net.  It’s always been my purpose and search for my art to have a meaningful message…art is only a burden and untapped treasure if it has nothing to say.”

Johnson has plenty to say. Her work, which has a transformative quality with an edge of the surreal in many of her current pieces, fully expresses her purpose. “I have an inner need for a deeper message based on my life’s experiences as a woman, visual artist, and artist of color. From birth to now, I’ve faced too many obstacles because of the color of my skin, whereas with the power of art as a tool, I felt I could address and voice these issues. ” 

Address them she has. For her current exhibition Soul’s Cry, now at TAG in mid-city, she created almost entirely new works and updated a few others “because life and history is constantly happening.” Her current work departs from past series honoring jazz, blues, and entertainment icons, as well as being quite different from her Angel series, which is based on Bible verses and scriptures meaningful to her. Johnson notes that she plans to always continue her angels and spiritual imagery, however.

But Soul’s Cry is an aching and glorious response to racism. “From early childhood [I had] experiences of racism, [including] being told as if it was a compliment, that I am an ‘exception to my race,’” she says, also describing the pain of racism that she saw reflected in her parents’ experiences. “I couldn’t keep silent any longer. I needed to express our history from 400 years of oppression and inequality to now.” From the first enslaved people brought to Point Comfort, Va. in 1619, to the horrific recent rise of emboldened white supremacy groups, Johnson sought to recognize that  “America was built with the blood, sweat, tears, deaths and lives of black people.”

Soul’s Cry is just the beginning for Johnson, who plans to continue this series. “My work is to educate, so we can stop having ‘Karens,’ racial and financial inequities, police killings of minorities without accountability. [It is] to inform, heal, and uplift by the sheer power of recalling our history…to act as a recorder, a visual storyteller of our truths past and present, advocating for positive change.”

In short, this is an important body of work, both artistically and thematically. Johnson works primarily in pencil, and calls her astonishingly detailed work “pencil painting.”  While well-versed in other mediums, she says she loves the “challenge of using one’s natural ability to draw or paint with pencils. I do not like lengthy prepping of a media before I can get started; with pencils I can mix right on the surface I’m working on, and when I take a break or finish, there’s no lengthy cleanup necessary or potentially harmful chemicals.”

That Johnson’s work is inspirational is a given; she says she self-identifies her work as “inspired” because she feels guided as she creates by her “higher power or knowledgeable being revealing and speaking calmly to my spirit and into my life. If at times it doesn’t work out or flow well, it means that there is too much of me in the way, and I need  to reconnect to my power source for guidance and help,” she attests.

Johnson began as an artist before she even reached school age, mesmerized, as she puts it, by art and the fact that a human being could create art images. From her teaching degree to advanced studies at the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Philadelphia College of Art, and the Pratt Institute of Art in New York, Johnson never stopped producing and perfecting her illuminative and passionate work.

Moving from Chicago to Los Angeles, she’s been showcased in the Smithsonian, The Getty Collection, MOCA Los Angeles, and more, as well as producing commissioned works for members of the Hollywood elite from Halle Berry to Queen Latifah, as well as creating for companies such as the Los Angeles Dodgers to United Airlines. But through it all, her ultimate plan is to reach a vast audience and truly elicit transformation through her work.

Today, she plans for expand on a series of works concerning Slave Songs/African American Spirituals, as well as expanding Soul’s Cry as a series. Her purpose is to both expose America’s history of racial injustice and to “motivate positive change.”

Always expansive, she plans to create a new series highlighting and honoring women as well, primarily women of color.

She wants viewers to “hear the cry of the ancestors, to feel uncomfortable with the knowledge of America’s history, the pain, struggle, and injustices I’ve visually recorded.” She hopes that everyone witnessing her works will “let the message speak to your spirit and conscience and move you to see that we all are of the human race and we can make a change for the better together.” Her hope is to evoke the vital necessity of change, so that others will not experience what she did in researching and creating the images in Soul’s Cry, during which process, she says “Many times I’ve felt like ‘I can’t breathe!’”

Johnson’s work, on the other hand is a welcome, expansive, cleansing breath of fresh air, carrying substantial vision. TAG is open for in-person viewing of Johnson’s work, or virtually at http://taggallery.net/buena-johnson-souls-cry

There will be a virtual artist talk and walk-through of the exhibition on Thursday, March 18^th at 7 p.m. To join, visit: https://www.taggallery.net/shop/buena-johnson-soulscry-virtual-walkthrough 

Soul’s Cry will be on view March 16^th through April 10^th; TAG is located at 5458 Wilshire Blvd. in mid-city. On March 25^th, a virtual reception for Johnson and other exhibiting solo shows will also be presented online at https://www.taggallery.net/shop/lightner-soetebier-johnson-huffman-virtual reception-tickets.

• Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist