Professor Harvey Johnson (b. 1947, Port Arthur, Texas) is a distinguished African American painter, printmaker, draftsman, and educator whose career spans more than five decades. Often described as a visual poet, Professor Johnson has developed a deeply symbolic and spiritually grounded visual language rooted in African diasporic memory, cultural endurance, and the lived experience of Black communities in America. 

Raised in the segregated Gulf Coast region of Texas and shaped by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Johnson’s work reflects a lifelong engagement with history, identity, and the human condition. His art asserts African cultural continuity as a living force—one that connects past, present, and future across generations and geographies. 

Johnson studied at Texas Southern University beside Dr. John Biggers, the pioneering muralist and founder of TSU’s art department. Biggers’s emphasis on African cosmology, narrative structure, and cultural inheritance profoundly shaped Johnson’s artistic philosophy. During his tenure, he and his colleague John Biggers established a collaboration on several significant projects, most notably the murals “Salt Marsh” and “Nubia,” and co-authored a manuscript entitled Nubia. While Biggers often worked monumentally, Johnson developed a more intimate visual approach, focusing on individual and familial presence, interior life, and everyday ritual rendered with reverence and poetic restraint. 

Blending figurative realism with abstraction and metaphor, Johnson’s compositions frequently feature elongated figures, earth-toned palettes, expressive linework, and symbolic objects such as books, birds, masks, and ancestral presences. His subjects—mothers and children, elders, laborers, and spiritual figures—are imbued with dignity, resilience, and quiet strength. Rather than overt spectacle or protest, Johnson emphasizes presence, psychological depth, and spiritual resonance. Through his creation of “visual poetry,” he expands the concept of an individual oeuvre. By adopting the term “visual poetry” in place of the conventional label “art,” he contributes to a broader cultural reclamation and healing—one that challenges Western artistic conventions while deepening the diversity and understanding of African art in America. 

Central to his work is an engagement with Negro Spirituals, which he regards as sophisticated cultural texts encoding African aesthetic principles, ancestral knowledge, and systems of belief. For Johnson, these spirituals demonstrate the capacity to transform historical trauma into spiritual and human affirmation. Within this framework, he also examines evidence of John Biggers’s use of African sacred geometry in murals such as “Family Unity,” “Quilting Party,” and “Nubia,” which he interprets as expressions of “The Language of Our Souls.” His work aligns with the understanding that history is not static or distant, but embodied and continuously active within contemporary life. 

After earning his degrees, Johnson joined the faculty at Texas Southern University, where he taught for over forty years, retiring in 2007 after 34 years of service as a professor of art. As an educator, he played a pivotal role in shaping generations of artists, emphasizing technical rigor, cultural awareness, and artistic responsibility. His influence extends beyond his own practice into the broader landscape of African American art through mentorship, public murals, and institutional engagement. His work includes the mural “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” at a community center in Houston, Texas. 

Johnson’s work has been widely exhibited and collected by major institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Grace Museum, Abilene, where he was a featured artist; the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; and the Phillips Museum, Tulsa; as well as exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and participation in the National Black Arts Festival in Georgia, among others. Through both his art and his teaching, Harvey Johnson stands as a custodian of diasporic memory and an enduring voice in American visual culture. 

Education 

• M.F.A., Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 1973 

• B.A. Ed., Texas Southern University, Houston, TX, 1971 

Academic Appointments 

• Professor of Art (Retired), Texas Southern University, Houston, TX, 2005–2007 

• Associate Professor of Art, Texas Southern University, 1980–2005 

• Assistant Professor / Instructor of Art, Texas Southern University, 1976–1980 

• Graduate Teaching Assistant, Washington State University, 1971–1973 

• Research Assistant, Washington State University, 1973–1976 

Solo Exhibitions 

• Harvey Johnson: A Triple Middle Passage, Art Museum of the Southwest, Beaumont, TX, 2015 

Selected Group Exhibitions 

• Witness: Black Artists in Texas Then and Now, Grace Museum, Abilene, TX, 2023–2024 

• The Language of Our Souls: The Visual Poetry of Harvey Johnson, Phillips Seminary Gallery, Tulsa, OK, 2023 

• Negro Spirituals: A Triple Middle Passage, African American Library at the Gregory School, Houston, TX, 2013 

• Call and Response, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, 1996 

• View from the Upper Room, traveling exhibition: 

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

• North Carolina Museum of Art 

• Wadsworth Atheneum 

• Hampton University Art Museum 

• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1995–1997 

• I Remember… Thirty Years After the March on Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1993 

Public Commissions 

• All God’s Chillun Got Wings, Clinton Park Community Center, Houston, TX, 2003 

• Stained Glass Commission, Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, Lake Charles, LA, 2019 

• Nubia (with John Biggers), Texas Southern University, Houston, TX, 1999 

• Salt Marsh (with John Biggers), University of Houston–Downtown, Houston, TX, 1998 

• Spirit of FESTAC, commissioned by emissary of the Nigerian Government, 1980 

Collections 

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

• Grace Museum, Abilene, TX 

• Museum of the Southwest, Beaumont, TX 

• Texas Southern University, Houston, TX 

• Phillips Collection, Tulsa, OK 

• City of Houston 

• Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth (related holdings) 

• Private collections including Russell Tether, John L. Nau, Susan McAshan 

Honors & Awards 

• Founding Artist Day Proclamation, City of Houston, 2013 

• Harvey L. Johnson Day, Houston, TX (1981) 

• Harvey L. Johnson Day, Port Arthur, TX (1982) 

• Commemorative Artist, National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA, 1996 

• Ford Foundation & Faculty University Grant, 1977 

• First Place in Drawing, Atlanta Life Insurance National Art Exhibition, 1986 

• African American Ancestral Art Research, Sierra Leone, 1990