Devin B. Johnson is a painter who is always taking snapshots. In his homebase of New York, walks fuel what he envisions on canvas; he’ll see people or a scene, take a picture, and translate that moment into his art—luminous portraits of everyday Black life that hover between figuration and abstraction. “It’s a way to give reverence and hospitality to the people that dwell in the space,” Johnson says. “The hospitality I think about is not necessarily grabbing a portrait of the person, but encapsulating an energy or sentiment.” 

His idea of hospitality comes from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as discussed in her book Harlem, in which the scholar considers the importance of one’s intention within new spaces. “I  like to think about this idea of getting to know a place before I can feel comfortable taking from it,” Johnson says. “I want to sit, mold into it, see what’s going on.” 

In Miami, he focused on three paintings destined for exhibitions in Los Angeles and London. Walking along Biscayne Bay or soaking in the city’s scenery from an Uber, he continued photographing—“just taking inventory of  moments I felt were beautiful,” he says—and carried those feelings into his studio. “Seeing things, feeling the vibe and energy, other associations can open up from that,” he adds. “A lot of the work is depicting my body, me, in transit, and how to articulate the subconscious bits of scenes that  go on in between the space that I dwell.” 

His colors became warmer, more vibrant, and more lush. He also integrated water from the bay into paints, sprinkling them with ash and allowing evaporation to organically move the pigments. One painting, titled Nothing Gold Can Stay, draws on a photograph taken in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, of a man standing near a stoop. Rendered in intense reds and oranges, it invites entry into a prolonged moment of quiet solitude, but one seemingly on the precipice of interruption. “Things are always in ebb and flow,” Johnson says. “I love to think about how I can capture the flux of reality and its different parts.”