Daphne Johnson-Clark

Beautiful Badlands ND Artist
Beau Theige

Daphne was born and raised in rural North Dakota only three miles from the Montana border. Her Grandparents had a ranch 10 miles from her childhood home. Daphne spent the majority of her childhood at their ranch; chasing cows, building fences, milking cows and helping check for spring calves. There is a rough beauty to this area that few people get to enjoy as the population remains classified as frontier which is less than six people per square mile. Most of these counties have an average density of two people per square mile.

Daphne received a Bachelors degree in Biology in 2003 and has spent the time since then working as Environmental Health Practitioner working to protect the area where she was raised. Over the years she has watched as the ranching life in ND and MT has disappeared.

In 2010, Daphne was drawn to start painting when a friend introduced her to oil paint as a medium. It was then she discovered she could easily spend fulfilling hours mixing paint colors and manipulating the paints on the canvas with different brushes, strokes and the pallet knife. The fluidity and versatility of this new to me medium had her hooked. In 2012, Daphne enrolled at the Academy of Art University to pursue a Masters in Fine Art. Daphne will spend the next couple of years working on her thesis: A Disappearing Life; Ranching in the Upper Midwest, North Dakota and Montana. It is a natural fit to bring together her background and love for ranching and the outdoors into her painting. There is a story in these rural areas just waiting to be told to the rest of the world and Daphne wants to be one of the people telling that story.

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