Anderson Johnson Gallery

Description

Anderson Johnson: the Artist Biography

Anderson Johnson became a street preacher at the age of eight and spent most of his life preaching in churches and on street corners throughout America. When he fell ill in the early 1970's he returned to his native Virginia, where he spent more than twenty years transforming his two-story home into a "faith mission" decorated from floor to ceiling with portraits and visionary images. He conducted lively church services to a small gathering of devotees at his Faith Mission every Sunday; these weekly gatherings were impassioned outpourings of religious zeal, with Reverend Johnson preaching, singing, and playing various instruments. In 1995, the Faith Mission was condemned, and Johnson moved to an apartment, where he continued to adorn any flat surface he could find with house paint. Reverend Johnson died in 1998.