Alumni Artist Brings Canterbury Hilltop to Life in This Year’s Christmas Card

Earlier this week, Canterbury alumni, families, and friends found a Christmas greeting from the School in their mailboxes. The card features an oil painting of our hilltop in a soft winter light. It’s an evocative scene familiar to anyone with fond memories of Canterbury at Christmastime, and with good reason: the painting was created by alumna Stephanie (Goos) Johnson ’97 P ’28.

“High school was a great experience for me,” she says. “All of my teachers, every single one, were so inspiring. It’s something my husband (fellow alumnus Eliot Johnson ’97 P ’28) and I appreciate to this day.”

Stephanie was always artistic, but explains that it wasn’t until she came to Canterbury that her passion was truly fostered in her art classes, setting her on a path to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from SUNY New Paltz. Upon graduation, she joined a creative firm and enjoyed a career in packaging design.

Within a few years, Stephanie and Eliot had three sons and moved to Washington, Connecticut. By then, Stephanie had stepped back from the corporate world but found she missed having the creative outlet that graphic design had offered. Her mother suggested she take art classes, something she hadn’t had the opportunity to explore since college. 

Before long, Stephanie found she had fallen in love with oil painting. Inspired by the beauty of the Litchfield hills, she has focused on creating landscapes and soon found that painting inspired her to look at the world in a new way.
 

“You start to appreciate and notice things in the world around you,” she explains. “The way the clouds are lit. How the treetops change colors as they move. You really start to feel connected to your surroundings in a different way, and that feeds your art.”

This perspective helped to inspire her work on Canterbury’s holiday card, though the piece took shape a little differently than many of her other works. Stephanie relied on drone footage of the campus as a reference point.

“It was challenging at times, but I like a challenge,” she observes. “The drone footage taken during the summer, and I had to paint a winter scene. But I know my colors, and I had fun in the process.”

We’re delighted to be able to share this piece with the Canterbury community: Stephanie captured our hilltop home as only a Saint could.

Stephanie currently works as a professional artist with a studio in Washington. Her son, Lathrop, attends Canterbury. Her work is available at stephaniegoosjohnson.com.