MARYALICE JOHNSTON uses a variety of materials and methods to express her creative thoughts. Born in Ft. Smith, Arkansas she was raised in a family engaged with the arts, an environment that gave her an appreciation and love for creativity. She left Ft. Smith to attend the Ringling College of Art and Design where she received a BFA in Painting in 1976. Soon after she was accepted into the graduate program at Pratt Institute and received an MFA in Painting in 1982. In 1985 she applied for and was awarded a Visual Arts Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, where she was in residence as a Visual Arts Fellow for two years. After her fellowship years she served as the Visual Arts Coordinator at FAWC for eleven years.
During her years in Provincetown she exhibited her work extensively in the Northeast, participated in collaborative art projects concerning the natural environment, was a founding member of artStrand Gallery: representing seven Cape Cod based artists, and was a co-founder of Butter: a band experimenting with music and art. Her work is represented in a number of museums and private collections across the country, is included in Deborah Forman’s 2013 Contemporary Cape Cod Artists: Images of Land + Sea, and appears on the book covers for Waterlings, poems by Eileen Moeller, and My Secret Boat, poems by Michael Burkard. In 2015 she moved to Washington Park, NC where she maintains her studio and enjoys river life with her partner.
