Before he drove his car off a 300-foot cliff in northern San Diego County in December 1983, Mack Nez Johnson was a hellraiser.  "It was alcohol and drug related," he said. "I went to sleep on the wheel and woke up in the hospital the next day, paralyzed from my chest down. The reports said I had died twice--or three times."

Six years ago, the young father of two also was a promising part-time artist who had made a living since he was 14 in jobs ranging from a screen printer to a choker setter for a logging company in California. The wreck shattered not only his body but his marriage.

Now a quadriplegic living on state disability payments and Medicare, Johnson also has felt the pain of being a Native American in a non-Indian culture. But he has turned to the painstaking discipline of watercolor painting for his therapy.

"There's a lot of pain and hurt inside. This is how I get it out," he said. The Shoshone-Navajo artist has been sober since 1986. He also has become highly skilled, wheeling a motorized wheelchair up to his easel and painting with a mouthstick clenched in his teeth.

By any standard, he's a skilled artist with an increasingly daring vision.

This article was written by Mark Crawford and appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal

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VSA arts of Nevada Please direct questions and comments about VSA arts of Nevada to meh@vsan.reno.nv.us

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