Rest In Peace 11/5/11...JAMES JOHNSON passed away in November 2011. He was an artist at High Tide Gallery from 2008-2011. We will miss his talent and his friendship greatly.

• Artist Bio•
JAMES JOHNSON was a bartender in a rough and tumble New Orleans French Quarter pub when there was a particularly violent night. He prayed to God that if God would let him follow his lifelong dream of being an artist, he would never go behind the bar again.

James painted his first bottle as a present on Mother's Day 1996 in Panama City Beach, FL. When ladies from his church saw it, they ordered custom bottles to sell at the church gift shop.That order led to many more in local high-end gift stores and then to shops in the resort town of Seaside, FL. One day, James turned an arrowhead sand dollar on its side and saw a "fish." His first order of hand-painted sand dollar fish was for 5,000! Florida Governor Lawton Chiles decorated a Christmas tree in the Governor's Mansion with 144 of them in 1997. "My art is my meditation and a gift from God," James says.