Check out Mia's story from her Voyage LA Magazine interview!
Mia (Tomia) Renee Johnson
As an artist, I have always used my creations to explore my own interests, the journey deep in my imagination, that place that we all want to go to get away from reality. To me, that place is home. I take great influence from fantasy, different cultures and cartoons, which probably stems from growing up always wanting to be anywhere but in my own body. I feel that I have an unusually rare view on what beauty and happiness are because it has always been things I can’t grasp or understand. I’m drawn to what’s different. It is the differences in culture that create the idea of exoticism and I am always looking to find the beauty in those differences. People that are different don’t usually feel beautiful and can’t relate to what is portrayed as beauty. We tend to want to get away from realism and it is rare to see those differences used as subject matter. By focusing my artistic lens on the exotic and fantasy, I want to draw attention to cultures and beauty that might not otherwise be noticed.
Illustration is my way of venting, it’s me channeling a little love and a little hate and it keeps me alive. It gives me a voice, and I'm determined to make illustration my way of life. I want my work to portray views or ideas that aren’t always considered normal and are often how I personally feel. Nothing feels better than to take seemingly mundane ideas, beings, or objects and discover the weird, strange, and impossible in them. I know that my life’s purpose as an artist is to show people a piece of that perfectly strange place, where anyone can belong and feel at home. Through my work I’d love to take people on a journey and give them a piece of what is deep in my head that not even I understand. That place is perfect, it’s the unseen, it’s beauty, it’s inhuman, it defies race, its obscure, it’s magic.
Illustration is my way of venting, it’s me channeling a little love and a little hate and it keeps me alive. It gives me a voice, and I'm determined to make illustration my way of life. I want my work to portray views or ideas that aren’t always considered normal and are often how I personally feel. Nothing feels better than to take seemingly mundane ideas, beings, or objects and discover the weird, strange, and impossible in them. I know that my life’s purpose as an artist is to show people a piece of that perfectly strange place, where anyone can belong and feel at home. Through my work I’d love to take people on a journey and give them a piece of what is deep in my head that not even I understand. That place is perfect, it’s the unseen, it’s beauty, it’s inhuman, it defies race, its obscure, it’s magic.
