Artist, violin maker and socialist, was born in Townsville, Qld. He left school early and worked in odd jobs from the age of nine. In 1934, aged 22, he became a committed socialist after hearing a speech in Townsville by the left-wing Queensland lawyer Fred Patterson. He moved to Sydney that year to study art at East Sydney Technical College on a scholarship, working at odd jobs around the city, posing at night as an artist’s model, went to sea on coastal traders, worked as a fitter and turner and as a portrait painter. As an artist, sculptor, photographer, designer and woodworker, he was part of a group of painters, writers, poets and filmmakers who lived close to Sydney’s wharves in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. He joined the Communist Party and several Trade Unions. He was involved in a number of strikes as well as actively working against Menzies’s referendum to ban the Communist Party in 1951, where he used his talents to design logos and other visuals in the 'Vote No’ campaign. At a Communist Party meeting he met his wife Phyllis; they married in Paddington in 1939 and had three children.
In the early 1940s Johnson began building violins (although he couldn’t play them). Using traditional materials and methods, he became world-renowned for his instruments. Always inscribed with the letters TIMBFGNBOS (“this instrument may be freely given, never bought or sold”), they were given to promising young musicians who otherwise could not afford them. In 1992 he estimated that he had built 60 violins. He was awarded the OAM in 1991 for 'services to arts, in particular, music instrument making’, complementing the OAM Phyllis had received in 1989 for 'services to women’s affairs and consumer rights’. He died in 2003, aged 90, survived by Phyllis and two of their children, Peter and Alice. Another son, Ralph, predeceased him.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
