Margo M. Johnson

Margo Johnson is a painter and lifelong student of the arts, originally from Wilmington, Delaware. After earning a B.S. from the University of Delaware and a graduate degree from West Chester University, she spent 36 years teaching art in public schools — a career rooted in her belief that seeing art changes people.

Margo's earliest influences were shaped by a high school teacher who brought students to galleries in Philadelphia and New York. She fell in love with the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet — whose home in Giverny she later visited — and developed a deep affinity for the loose, luminous style of John Singer Sargent.

Her Greek heritage informs both her subject matter and her approach. Travels to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, and Egypt have been a deep source of inspiration, and Margo has painted plein air in all of these places — as well as closer to home across Delaware and Pennsylvania. She spends enough time in a place to absorb its atmosphere before she paints it. Her oceans pulse with color; her landscapes — urban or pastoral — capture what it actually feels like to be there. Light and palette are her primary tools.

Margo's home gallery and studio is at Opera House Arts and Antiques in Historic New Castle, Delaware, and her work has been displayed across the mid-Atlantic.