Amanda Johnson

Artist | Designer | Advocate
Delray Beach, FL

Amanda Johnson is a Baltimore-born artist whose practice is rooted in painting, with an expanded vocabulary that extends into textile design and wearable art. She received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, where she developed a disciplined approach to form, color, and material.

Johnson’s work centers on the contemporary female figure. Her paintings engage modern female portraiture not as passive representation, but as an active site of presence and agency. Figures emerge through assertive color, layered gesture, and a tension between abstraction and figuration. Rather than pursuing strict likeness, she constructs psychological and emotional states—portraits that hold both immediacy and ambiguity, resisting fixed narratives. The result is a body of work that challenges idealized depictions of women, offering instead a visual language of autonomy, complexity, and self-possession.

Her early career in costume design and makeup for films by John Waters, and her work as Assistant Costume Designer on HBO series including The Wire, The Corner, and Homicide: Life on the Street, informs her understanding of character, silhouette, and visual construction—elements that continue to shape both her painted and wearable work.

Now based in Delray Beach, Florida, Johnson is the founder of Amanda Johnson Studio and co-founder, with her husband James Knill, of Amanda James Gallery. Conceived as an integrated space for making and presentation, the gallery operates as studio, exhibition space, custom frame shop, and boutique. Central to her practice is the translation of painting into textile—her original compositions reimagined as limited-edition garments that extend the language of painting onto the body, collapsing the boundary between art object and lived experience.

Johnson’s work is grounded in a sustained commitment to women—their autonomy, multiplicity, and lived realities. Her practice resists prescriptive ideals, instead creating space for individuality and movement. This ethos carries through her production model, which prioritizes collaboration with women-owned businesses. She has also served for over a decade on the Board of the Wayside House Women’s Recovery Center, supporting initiatives that provide critical resources for women and families in recovery.

Across mediums, her work is defined by a rigorous engagement with color, gesture, and form, underpinned by a philosophy of joie de vivre—not as ornament, but as a deliberate insistence on vitality, beauty, and living fully.

Amanda James Gallery
400 Gulfstream Blvd
Delray Beach, FL 33444
Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM
(561) 270-7832

Contact:
amandajohnsonstudio@gmail.com