Will began painting southwestern landscapes at the age of fourteen under Fanchon Heath Burtenshaw of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Greatly influenced by changes in his environment, his paintings are now most frequently abstractions, evolving quickly after his relocation to the much denser and more mega-politan Denver, Colorado, in 1994, and, beginning in 1990, by annual summer retreats to a few feet above high tide in a tiny, hidden cove, in the central coast of Maine, where the water is always dynamic, a hypnotically intriguing opposition to the more static southwestern mountains, deserts, and plains.

Will has at various times sculpted in metal, wood and stone, designed and built adobe homes, carved decorative wooden lintels and posts and cabinets, designed and manufactured silver and gold jewelry, illustrated publications and technical manuals, and, briefly, experimented with video editing and production. His true love in artistic expression continues to be in painting.

Will's paintings changed. Southwest landscapes gave way to fantasies and minimalist sketches, which in turn gave way to space paintings. Visits to Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon stimulated a series of paintings of ruins. A five-month trip to Italy, France and Norway threw a complex European architectural mix onto the canvas, and viewing thousands of square yards of museum art permanently altered a previously provincial perspective. For an enjoyable anecdote about Will's "French" period, visit the archive.

In Denver, daily commutes fighting the sun and the traffic abstracted time and structural edges, and obscured solidity and definition with transcendental clouds. Summers' coastal isolation overlaid upon that experiential haze an attempt at coastal impressionism. Fixed definitions gave way. Abstraction won. Be sure to see abstracts by Will Johnstone from 2006

"In my paintings, I no longer try to re-present the external, that which is, or was, or could be. I try instead to express that which is within."

Will's studio houses over 150 of his paintings and drawings, from 1962 through today. A good cross section of his art can be viewed here at www.willjohnstone.com, and at his additional web site, www.bluewhitelight.com.

Footnote: Will Johnstone also designs and writes original, web-based, distributed, student enrollment and information management software for OCICU, a consortium of more than 60 online colleges and universities, managed by New Ventures of Regis University. For additional information visit WWW Programming.