Where it all started…

Ralph & Jeanette Johnstone: Artists 
As partners Ralph and Jeanette were inseparable, but their talents and artistic inclinations were different. Jeanette, a classical pianist and a fine artist with an innate sensitivity to form, figure drawing and oil portraiture, was happiest when drawing and painting family and loved ones. Ralph, the designer and illustrator, depicted the larger picture of the outside world with stylized scenes of landscapes, cities, and animals. 
The collection of their work is varied and extensive, including drawings, paintings, illustrations, silk-screened prints, embroidered wall-hangings and portable murals. The time period of creation of these works spans over fifty years, from the 1930’s to the early 1980’s … a half-century of artwork.

Ralph & Jeanette Johnstone - Their Story… A Closer Look There were three periods of Ralph and Jeanette’s private and art-life together… life in Chicago and at The Chicago Art Institute where they both met, life in Southern California and teaching at the University of Southern California, and their retirement and the building of their art studio in Glendale. 
The beginning of this love affair with art and each other began at the Chicago Art Institute in the 1930’s where they studied art and design together, and Jeanette at the same time continued advanced piano studies at the University of Chicago Conservatory. There, Jeanette completed numerous works, but most notable are her fashion sketches and a series of life drawings incredibly sensitive to light and form. At this time, Ralph was also a puppeteer for the Chicago and New York World’s Fairs, and consequently made marionettes of he and Jeanette. After discovering the many loves they had in common: design, folk art, music, ballet, theatre - they were married and continued to work and teach at the Chicago Art institute, where Ralph received his Master’s in Design. 
Ralph was lured into Chicago advertising and illustration scene in the 1940’s, while Jeanette’s life and artwork centered around a new family. This was the beginning of the portraiture she would of the family. With some difficulty they survived the depression, where they worked on Federal Art Project murals together, then decided to make the move to sunny Southern California to be closer to Jeanette’s parents. 

This journey began then next segment of their private and art lives. With the birth of their daughters Jennifer and Linda, they settled into their new life and began to teach design and various other subjects at the University of Southern California Fine Art Department. Their lives were encompassed in a life of teaching at the University for the next 30 years. Ralph was a passionate professor, relentlessly helping and encouraging his students. He designed much of the advertising for the university and his own personal artwork from this time was often in relation to the creative problems his students were exploring. During this time, Ralph completed an amazing variety of fine artworks ranging from calligraphy pen and ink drawings, designed and painted furniture, silk screened prints, and wall hangings as well as designed stationery for The American Artists Group in NY. Both Jeanette and Ralph participated in group art shows, faculty shows, and combined exhibits, though just producing artwork for “arts sake” and their own pleasure too more precedence than showing. 

Ralph continued to teach until 1973, whereas Jeanette had stopped teaching earlier, and they both began retirement as they had new plans to produce portable murals that they intended to market. They were large paintings on masonite wall panels, that they felt would interest clients as they were portable - and not painted directly on walls. Together they worked on these murals, with subjects ranging  widely from depictions of flora and fauna, mythology, and illuminated manuscripts. Whatever interested them at the time. All of this they accomplished in an incredible new studio they had designed and built (with help!) in their retirement. This studio fulfilled their final dreams by providing the work-space and place to house their collections and the art they loved. 
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In the very last years of their lives, Ralf suffered a serious stroke, partially recovering. He would not be undaunted by this and managed to paint two additional murals with Jeanette’s help before passing away in 1985. Jeanette managed to paint a last portrait of her grandchildren before Ralph’s death, but could not continue to work thereafter, passing away in 1989. 
Ralph and Jeanette were two people intertwined with the life journey of sharing their love and their art… and who also lovingly shared it with their family and friends and we have been left with a marvelous gift and also an incredible task of how to preserve and care for this collection going forward.  Most of the work lives in the studio they built together in Glendale, California, where their grand daughter Candace, her husband and daughter live. Currently we are in the midst of a family effort to archive and document the vast body of work with hopes of producing a printed as well as on-line catalog of these works. We hope you will find their story and the artwork here inspiring! Thank you for coming and experiencing their work, as well as to discover the creative influence it has had over the entire family for generations.  
If you’d like to take a tour of the studio, please contact Candace Metzger to schedule an appointment, please contact the Gallery Director.