Leasho Johnson (he/him) is a visual artist working primarily in painting, installation, and sculpture. He was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and raised in Sheffield, a small town on the outskirts of Negril. Johnson uses his experience growing up Black, gay, and male to explore concepts around identity within the post-colonial condition.
Working at the intersection of painting and drawing, Leasho combines charcoal, homemade paints, and dyes, creating works that straddle the line between precision and improvisation. His work aims to challenge historical, political, and social expectations surrounding the Black queer experience.
Leasho focuses on the post-colonial state, primarily his own experience and relationships in proximity to places, stereotypes, and mythologies from the Caribbean. This inquiry delves into the philosophical mechanisms of survival for queer people, the existential dynamics of fear concerning the 'other,' and how that is tied up with perceptions around Blackness and people of color. His paintings utilize the effects of Fragmentation as a methodological foil for disruption and coping with a legacy of violence on the Black queer body.
Leasho Johnson is being featured in the Liverpool Biennale 2025. He was a fellow of the Jamaica Art Society in 2022 and a Leslie Lohman Museum fellow in 2021. A recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship from the School of Art Institute Chicago (SAIC) 2018 - 2020. Leasho has shown his work in his home country at several National Gallery of Jamaica exhibitions, including the Jamaica Biennial 2012, 2014, 2017, and 2022. Internationally, Leasho has exhibited in Fragments of Epic Memory at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada 2021. Leasho is currently based in Chicago. His work is also part of various notable private collections and museum permanent collections.
The sea is another country, 2024
Featured Artworks
Your tastes betray your desire for my presence, 2024
Charcoal, watercolors, distemper, acrylic, casein, Indigo dye, logwood dye, oil, oil stick, collage, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 46 x 62 x 1.75 in
Image courtesy of the artist
The act of wanting to be wanted, to be understood, to be seen, to be loved?, 2025
Charcoal, watercolors, distemper, casein, acrylic, logwood dye, oil, oil stick, collage, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 46 x 62 x 1.75 in
Image courtesy of the artist, and TERN Gallery, Bahamas
The lord of sound and lesser things (Anansi #32), 2024
Charcoal, watercolors, distemper, indigo dye, logwood dye, oil, collage, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 67.5 x 52 x 1.72 in
Image courtesy of the artist
With stony hearts or with a wound (Anansi #30), 2024
Charcoal, distemper, watercolor, logwood dye, acrylic, casein, oil, oil stick, gold foil, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 104h x 67w inches
Image courtesy of the artist, and TERN Gallery, Bahamas.
Bumps and Brains, 2024
Charcoal, watercolor, distemper, casein, acrylic, indigo dye, logwood dye, oil, collage and gesso on paper mounted to linen 35 x 27 inches
A sudden hatred of fields (Anansi #26), 2023,
Charcoal, distemper, watercolors, logwood dye, acrylic, oil, and collage, on paper mounted on canvas. 52 x 67 x 1.75 inches
Sound turns to mid-morning and then the silence of noon, 2023
Charcoal, watercolors, distemper, logwood dye, oil, collage, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 67.5 x 52 x 1
Buried beyond the pasture without any names (Anansi #22), 2023
Charcoal, distemper, watercolor, indigo dye, logwood dye, acrylic, oil, oil stick, gold foil, gold leaf, gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 52 x 67 x 1.75 inches
The shrinking world (Anansi #25), 2023
Charcoal, distemper, watercolors, acrylic, oil, oil stick, Indigo dye, oil, logwood dye, coffee, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas, 67.5 x 156 x 2 inches