Daphne Victoria Johnson: Joy Is . . . features RiverSpring Living resident Daphne Victoria Johnson’s vibrantly colored abstract paintings, character portraits, and a mixed media sculpture. Johnson uses a variety of materials, including cut glass, glitter paint, and acrylic paint on canvas to experiment with texture, creating compositions with aesthetic and emotional resonance. As she states, she imbues the art-making process with her own joyful energy. The exhibition poses the question: How do we define joy? Visitors are invited to respond to this prompt by adding to a “joy wall” where a collection of crowd-sourced answers will be displayed for the duration of the exhibition.

Johnson, in her fifties, is a working artist based in Harlem. She began making portraits of residents and staff in the RiverSpring art studio. She found that her art was part of her healing journey after a life-changing medical diagnosis. It helped her acclimate to her “new normal” and opened the way for conversations. Although the portraits she’s made at RiverSpring are executed in the same style as her “character paintings”—fictional personas with names as titles—the works are the first time she’s done portraiture from life. The wealth of personalities she has encountered and the stories she has heard have been experiences she calls “part of her journey.”

About the artist

Daphne Victoria Johnson is an artist of African American and Irish descent who was born on the Lower East Side and grew up in Hamilton Heights. She is an alumnus of The Harlem School of the Arts where she studied art, drama, voice, and dance. Johnson’s work has been exhibited at Art on the Ave NYC; Art in the Garden, part of the annual Uptown Art Stroll organized by the Northern Manhattan Art Alliance; El Barrio’s Artspace PS109; Kota Nest Harlem; and Where Art Lives, organized by the West Harlem Arts Alliance, all in Upper Manhattan; and at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center on the Lower East Side. Johnson has assisted on murals and beautification projects in Harlem for Grandscale Mural Project and The Children’s Aid Society. This is her first one-person exhibition.