From Winslow, Arizona, David Johns is an abstract painter of works that express his inner thoughts, formed from a culture of growing up on the Navajo reservation and continuing to live nearby.

For many people, it is unusual to see abstract work such as that by Johns, a Native American artist. However, he began his career by combining figures and portraits in a traditional realist style with abstract motifs but then switched completely to abstraction.

He is also a muralist, and one of his murals, 1600 square feet and completed in 1988, is in Concord Place in Phoenix. It represents North American Indian tribes and images from sacred legends.

When he begins a painting, he has no preconceived ideas but dreams and meditates...