MOUNT VERNON — There’s a difference between one’s work and one’s passion, even if they are closely related.
Vernon Johnson was a graphic artist for the Shellmar Corporation, a Mount Vernon packaging company, from the 1940s through the 1970s.
But what Johnson painted for work didn’t fulfill his need to be creative, so on his own time, he began creating a collection of watercolor paintings of Knox County scenes that vividly capture life of the period.
Without question, his most famous painting is “Pitkin’s Corner,” which was painted in 1951.
It shows the busy corner in downtown Mount Vernon where South Main and Gambier Street cross. The northwest corner of the intersection was known as Pitkin’s Corner from Pitkin’s Market located there.
The market and other nearby businesses drew busy crowds, and Johnson decided to station himself atop the building on the southwest corner of the intersection in order to paint it.
In doing so, Johnson captured not just a crowd, but a set of individuals, each person displaying a personality caught in a few deft flecks of a paintbrush. It is fun to zoom in close and examine them one by one.
Highlights include the boy and his father who have noticed the painter on top of the building and stare at him as he’s painting them.
There’s also a blind man playing a guitar, a middle-aged woman scowling at two young women wearing low-cut dresses (much to her husband’s amusement), and an old lady with a cane, umbrella, and basket, who could be an illustration right out of Monty Python.
The sense of fun and affection in the painting is delightful.
For further information about Vernon Johnson, one can do no better than to visit the blog, The Artist’s Eye, that his daughter, Janis Johnson maintains. A few more of Johnson’s paintings can be seen at the Ohio History Connection.
