Artists of W 18th Street: Margo Mavrantonis Johnson


 Artists of W 18th Street

Margo Mavrantonis Johnson

Margo Mavrantonis Johnson is a W 18th St artist who is still active, although no longer living on our block.  Margo is retired from her art teaching career but continues to paint professionally.  She paints a variety of subjects, but my favorites are the structures and streetscapes from her frequent European trips, especially to her second home, Greece.  We treasure her Christmas cards which depict a peripatetic snowman who has visited New Castle, Tuscany and Greece, but has yet to experience a meltdown.


 
 
 
Margo has a studio and gallery representation in the Opera House, 304 Delaware  Street in old New Castle, Delaware, and a web site at https://margojohnson.artspan.com/exhibits.html.  There is an extensive gallery of her work there.
 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting Delaware's Flag

Image
  Revisiting Delaware's Flag : The Delaware flag was adopted in 1913.  It, like many other state flags, is a "seal - on - a - bedsheet" [actually a coat of arms] .   In 2001 the North American Vexillological Association ran an online membership poll of members asking them to rank the design of the flags of 72 US and Canadian state, province, and territorial flags. https://nava.org/digital-library/design/surveys/2001-State-Provincial-Flag-Survey.pdf . (I am a member of NAVA but was not then.)   Delaware came in 52 nd place. I thought I could give Delaware a quick redo. First, Lets get rid of the coat of arms and the text. I've kept the color selection, with its historical connection to Revolutionary War Delaware uniforms.     Then make the diamond larger.    Does it need anything else?  This may be enough.   I tried out a chicken, another Delaware historical association, this one lifted from a painting of mine, "Chanticleer." ...
Read more

Not Really Crabs

Image
  22 June 2021 CRABS & SUCH 3. NOT REALLY CRABS   "Horseshoe Crab" is a 8 x 10 inch acrylic on canvasboard depicting the so-called living fossil Limulus polyphemus, which we can see on the shores of the brackish reaches of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and elsewhere on the Atlantic Coast. Not a crab, and more closely related to spiders, it's a fascinating creature that's been around for millennia, swimming upside down, sporting seven eyes, and with blue blood rather than red. The oxygen transport in the horseshoe's blood is the copper metalloprotein  hemocyanin rather then the iron metalloprotein hemoglobin that most of the animal world depends on.  Think iron rust red, copper tarnish blue. Read up on him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab#Harvest_for_blood. Then there are the seriously dead and extinct trilobites, one of which I painted in "Before Adam."  They are also not closely related to crabs, but have a similar shape. I dug up...
Read more

Obida Last Visit

Image
  10 June 2021 OBIDA LAST VISIT    My grandparents had a small cottage on an isolated dune at Fenwick Island, DE. There were no near neighbors, no utilities, a pump for water outside, and an outhouse with a seat over a bucket.  I loved it.  The cottage, Obida, washed away in the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962. (https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/delaware/ash-wednesday-storm-de/).  My last visit there was in the summer of 1960. just before I left for graduate school in California.  During the Covid-19 lock-down I did a set of paintings, Last Visit I & II .   The two similar frames were thrift store finds on different occasions. This style of frame is sometimes called Adirondack or Black Forest.  They were popular around the turn of the 20th century.  I pick up interesting bargain frames and see what painting they inspire.
Read more