About this episode

Miles Johnson discusses his journey from mechanical engineer to self-taught painter, inspired by his grandmother and various artistic influences.

In this episode of The Truth In This Art, the guest is Miles Johnson ! About Miles Johnson: Miles Johnson is a self-described "unclassically untrained oil painter" and mechanical engineer based in the DMV area. In over 4 years—starting with over a year on iPad before transitioning to oils 3 years ago—he has created numerous pieces. His late grandmother was a painter herself who created approximately 300 pieces and inspired his creative path. Miles first painted her portrait last summer for his solo show. Growing up, Miles would run cross-country to the Smithsonian, where Thomas Cole's four-part series " Voyage of Life " gave him a revelation: "I never thought that paintings were like almost manga panels." He also draws inspiration from Little Black Goat , incorporating anime-style faces into his work. Miles applies his engineering background with painting by creating bullet-point lists and maintaining over 200 pages of documentation in Google Docs. His research process studies figures like Fannie Lou Hamer —someone who was "born into sharecropping and ended up dying with a foundation that gave a million acres of land across Mississippi." Later we discussed Miles working on Common…

People in this episode

Host: Rob Lee

Guest: Miles Johnson

Topics covered

• self-taught artist
• oil painting
• engineering background
• art inspiration
• affordable art

Keywords

• self-taught painter
• oil painting
• art inspiration
• affordable art
• engineering

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Voyage of Life, Common People Ain't Common

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