While still a student there, she became a founder member of the BLK Art Group and took part in their second show at the Africa Centre, London, in 1983.
[5] Reviewing her 1992 solo exhibition In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson, at the Black Art Gallery, London, artist Steve McQueen (at the time a student at Goldsmiths College) wrote: "What she does is to bring out the soul, sensuality, dignity, and spirituality of the black woman....Claudette Johnson's work is rooted in her African heritage.
"[12] In 2019, Johnson's first major institutional exhibition since 1990 was held at Modern Art Oxford, the show being described as "an overview of one of the most accomplished figurative artists working in Britain today....her art sets out to redress negative portrayals of black men and women and to counter the invisibility of black people in cultural spheres and beyond.
"[1] The reviewer for Art Fund wrote: "Intimate, powerful and sometimes deliberately uncomfortable, Claudette Johnson’s studies of black men and women demand attention and command respect.
Johnson's subjects, by turns defiant and wary, funny and challenging, represent the varieties of stories that can be told by, in the artist’s words, 'Blackwoman presence.'
[17][2] Johnson was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to art.