While East Hampton has long been a refuge for artists of all sorts, not all creatives who flocked to the area had an easy time becoming part of the artists’ colony. In the mid-20th century, while giants like Jackson Pollock, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and Alfonso Ossorio loomed large in the Hamptons art scene, many other artists were attracted to the area, including Buffie Johnson (1912-2006), a painter.
Johnson was a popular artist who had begun exhibiting in Paris in 1938 and would go on to show work all over the United States and Europe during the next 60 years. In 1950, Buffie and her husband, Gerald Sykes (1921-1984), bought a house on Georgica Pond, where she would live on and off for the next 20 or so years.
During that time, Johnson was part of many local exhibitions, including the 1964 Southampton College Festival of the Arts. This photo from The East Hampton Star’s archive shows Johnson with a pair of her paintings; it accompanied an announcement that she would be participating in the 1964 festival, for which she was one of 27 artists who showed works at Guild Hall. She also gave a guided tour and led a discussion of the exhibition.
Johnson made a point of being involved in the local art scene, and was a judge for the 1964 Ladies Village Improvement Society Fair poster contest.
Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, Johnson never really felt welcome in the arts community here, believing that the Abstract Expressionists she associated with were “subtly anti-female” and did not take women artists seriously. As a result, she spent more and more time in Europe, before eventually moving back to New York City in 1966, where she lived until she died in 2006.
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Julia Tyson is a librarian and archivist in the Long Island Collection.
