Meet Dion Johnson, a Los Angeles-based painter whose abstract compositions pulse with color, movement, and the charged energy of lived experience. Working between hard-edge structure and atmospheric depth, Johnson builds compositions intuitively — introducing color, inventing form, and trusting the process to reveal itself. We spoke with Johnson about the moments that fuel his palette, the rhythm behind his linework, and the story behind his edition with Haystack, Accelerate.
Your work is often described as capturing the “energy of a time and place” — what places or moments have had the strongest pull on your color and compositions lately?
I live in the Los Angeles area and was recently bicycling in the San Gabriel Mountains. I was pedaling up a substantial climb amid the mid-summer marine layer, feeling the heavy mist in the atmosphere. After about 40 minutes, I ascended above the clouds into bright sunshine — it was magical, as though I had slipped through time and space into a new dimension of crisp, vivid color.
How do you decide on a color palette for a new piece — is it intuitive, planned, or somewhere in between?
Things start very intuitively and then build. I select colors, introduce shapes, and make combinations. Planning comes in slowly as I begin to relate one area to the next. It’s like a puzzle — I don’t know what the solution is until I work my way through it.
Your lines have been described as having a “buzzy saunter” — can you talk about how movement and rhythm factor into how you build a composition?
My linework plays with opposites: a racing, intense yellow against a resting, gentle gray; an advancing warm red alongside a receding cool magenta; a glowing sky blue next to an eclipsing deep black. I want viewers to discover luminous energy and feel lively momentum in these linear chromatic relationships — and I think “buzzy saunter” describes that interactive experience well.
Can you tell us the story behind your edition with us, Accelerate — what was the starting point for that piece?
I remember exactly where I was when I started drawing Accelerate. I was in a coffee shop in Columbus, OH — Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue was playing. Sipping espresso, I knew I wanted a compressed, active side and an expansive, single-color side. Sometimes all it takes to start a piece is responding to your surroundings and trusting that it’s going to take you somewhere visual.
You move between hard-edge abstraction and more atmospheric elements — how do you think about that balance when you’re working?
Hard-edge shapes can be attention-grabbing and structural — like a Henri Matisse cut-out — and gradients can be romantically elusive and spatial, like a Caspar David Friedrich seascape. I want to incorporate both. It’s very playful to let a translucent passage overlap a color, or allow a solid shape slip behind a layer. Before long, there are so many variations and ways to create a new imaginary place or energetic experience.
With pieces like Chrysanthemum and Spy selling out, is there a particular series or direction in your recent work you’d love new collectors to discover?
Recently, childhood memories of playground experiences with my family were at the center of two series — Slide and Pendulum (alluding to swings). There’s a lot of joy in revisiting memories that feel like dreams now. So far these ideas have lived on relatively large canvases. I’d love to explore a more intimate scale and see these themes as iterations on paper.
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