ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
Artist Ernest Johnson, a former Roanoker known for his vivid watercolors, his influential teaching and his gentle manner, died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Oriental, N.C.
Johnson, who was 72, left Roanoke in 1993 to move to Gloucester. A year later, he moved to Oriental and opened the Ernest Johnson Studio Gallery in a magnolia-shaded building within sight of Pamlico Sound.
He maintained ties with Roanoke through his friendships and his art, exhibiting most recently at the Sidewalk Art Show in June. Friends set up and dismantled his exhibit, leaving the weakened artist to visit with friends and passers-by.
Johnson was a co-founder of the Virginia Watercolor Society, a charter member of the Watercolor USA Honor Society, the American Society of Marine Artists and the Southern Watercolor Society. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art.
In April, he received the prestigious High Winds Medal of the American Watercolor Society during the society's 129th annual exhibition at the Salmagundi Club in New York.
Roanoke artist Joan Henley, Johnson's close companion in recent years, declared the award a fitting climax to the career of a painter whose work seemed to improve despite his advancing years and declining health.
"His paintings just soared in the last year," she said by telephone from Oriental. "It just got so alive. He's given a lot of beauty to everybody."
The painting that won the High Winds Medal was a landscape of rural Franklin County. Johnson perhaps was best known for his landscapes and marine paintings, though he also did figures. In recent years, Henley said, he also completed a number of paintings of children.
Carol Nelms, a Roanoke watercolorist and longtime friend of Johnson's, described his style as "unique in that it was very carefree yet disciplined." She said it was characterized by near-abstract brush strokes and "bursts of color" that combined into a whole that was "cohesive and realistic and had broad appeal."
His work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections in the Roanoke area and elsewhere in the country.
Johnson was a native of Fox Hill, a Tidewater community near Hampton. He served in the Navy during World War II and moved to Roanoke in the early 1950s to work as a commercial artist with local advertising agencies and as a free-lancer. In addition to painting, he became an influential teacher who inspired by example and favored encouragement over criticism.
As word of Johnson's illness spread, Henley said, his mail included frequent notes of gratitude from painters who once were his students.
"He was much admired and very much revered by other artists," Nelms said. "He really opened up the world of art for many people in his teaching and his workshops."
Memorial services for Johnson will be held Sunday in Oriental and at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at Cave Spring United Methodist Church.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Photo by WALKER NELMS. Although he left town three yearsby CNBago, Ernest Johnson kept up his ties with the Roanoke art community.
Despite his illness, he exhibited his work at the Sidewalk Art Show
in June.