Blue Sky Gallery

About the Artist
Blue Sky

Blue Sky was born Warren Edward Johnson in Columbia, South Carolina, on September 18, 1938. He attended Dreher High School before his acceptance at the University of South Carolina, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in art and education.

At the prestigous Springs Mills show, he was judged "best of show" by Henry Geldzahler, then curator of the Metropolitan Museum, whereupon Sky was invited to move to New York to study at the Art Students League.

Sky has been painting professionally for over 45 years, and has been solely supported by his art since 1970. In 1974, he legally changed his name to Blue Sky, and engraved it across his most famous work, Tunnelvision, a year later.

Tunnelvision was featured in the February 1976 issue of People Magazine, and it has appeared in dozens of publications since. Sky has exhibited alongside such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Andrew Wyeth, Isamu Noguchi, Louise Nevelson, George Tooker, and Winslow Homer.

In 2000, Sky received the "Order of the Palmetto" - South Carolina's highest civilian state honor.

For an exhaustive bibliography of publications, exhibitions, unveilings, and critical responses concerning Blue's work, click here. To view the entry for Blue Sky on Wikipedia, click here.

Public Collections
Smithsonian
Mississippi Museum
SC State Museum
Florence Museum
IBM
Price Waterhouse
RJ Reynolds
Federal Reserve Banks
Bank of America

Selected Exhibitions
Chicago Museum of Contempory Art
National Academy of Design, New York
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
DeCordova
Greenville Museum
Gibbes Museum
Georgia Tech
Smithsonian
Mint Museum

Selected Quotations

"Fresh and bold... His work has both the technical ability and the freshness of vision, the feeling that something familiar is being seen for the first time, that has produced some of the best American painting of the past ten years... makes me want to see more of the artist's work."
-- Henry Geldzahler, late Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art

"His canvases are romantic and have a nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century sensibility, recalling the American landscape and seascapes of Winslow Homer. They suggest the sublime -- that ineffable quality of nature that is simultaneously both terrifying and beautiful. Blue Sky’s images are nostalgic and romantic; he derives his imagery from the things he loves and seeks to convey simply that sense of love. As realistic pictures, the landscapes capture some of the timeless qualities."
-- Craig Adcock, (then) Professor of Art History, Florida State University