Cecile Johnson (1916-2010) American, Watercolor 'Children at Turkey Run'. Signature in the lower right. Titled 'Children at Turkey Run' and other verbiage on the bottom. Watercolor landscape with trees and water, 3 people sitting in the foreground. Proceeds from this sale will benefit students at the Ringling College of Art & Design.

Size: 10 3/4 x 14 3/4 in. 

#8176 . 

She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and at Augustana and Macalaster Colleges.  She began her professional career as a painter in southern California, where she studied with the renowned painter Millard Sheets, learning the techniques of luminous, open-air watercolor painting and a contemporary sensibility to color and composition.  

Her watercolors reflect a spontaneous joy of life and are prized for their luminous qualities, sense of immediacy, power and intensity.  She was commissioned to paint live action portraits of athletes from Bjorn Borg to Jean-Claude Killy, Billy Jean King, Steve and Phil Mahre as well as sporting events including the US Open, the Kentucky Derby and the Olympic hockey game between the USA and the USSR at Lake Placid in 1980.  Selected as the official artist to paint five winter Olympic Games, Ms. Johnson was frequently broadcast live painting on the slopes and at rink side by ABC Wide World of Sports, Canadian Broadcasting, the BBC, CNN and other networks.

Her New York studio was at the fabled Hotel des Artistes, but she almost invariably painted on location - traveling across the United States, the Caribbean and around the world to capture landscapes both familiar and distant.  She distilled the beauty of cities in Europe and Japan and remote locations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, winning gold medals at major exhibitions, including the annual show of the American Watercolor Society.  She painted every major ski mountain in the United States, published as the Memorable Mountains Series in Skiing Magazine and in 2007 was honored by the North American Snowsports Journalists Association with their lifetime achievement award.  She was the first woman to be commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a combat artist to paint the activities of WAVES, Women Marines and Navy nurses.

Her work is held in many museum and private collections including those of King Gustav XVI of Sweden, Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and Emperor Akihito of Japan.  Her paintings have been exhibited in many solo exhibitions and are widely reproduced as fine art prints. She was elected to the boards of the American Watercolor Society and the National Art Museum of Sport.