About

Jessica Johnson is a feminist mixed-media artist, poet, and educator based in California. Through text, collage, and layered abstraction, she explores voice, identity, embodiment, and visibility in women's lives, examining the tension between silence and expression.

Her work is informed by decades as a writer and educator and considers what women have historically been expected to do, be, accept, and tolerate—while making space for resilience, resistance, reinvention, and joy.

A poet since childhood, Johnson began painting in 2020 and has pursued an intensive self-directed studio practice. Her background in language continues to shape the narrative and lyrical qualities of her visual work.

Her work has been supported by the Arts Council Santa Cruz County and the Puffin Foundation. Her current project, Speak Out / Shut Up, is supported in part by a grant from the Puffin Foundation.

For more than two decades, she has taught English, writing, psychology, creativity, and other subjects in diverse, trauma-informed classrooms. She holds a master's degree in counseling and has spent her career helping people discover, cultivate, and claim their own voices through writing, storytelling, and creative expression. That commitment to voice, accessibility, and human connection remains central to both her teaching and her artistic practice.

Her current body of work, Speak Out / Shut Up, is a feminist mixed-media series exploring the contradictory messages women receive about their voices—and the transformative act of reclaiming language and agency in midlife.

Both a personal journey and a collective invitation, the series asks viewers to remember, question, and reclaim the stories we carry about ourselves and the women around us.