[1] The Bryan Lathrop Foreign Traveling Scholarship of $1500 (1931)[3] enabled him to study fresco painting at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, the Atelier de Fresque of Paris, and the Ecole Egyptienne des Beaux Arts in Alexandria, Egypt.

French Memorial Gold Medal from the Art Institute Alumni Association for his painting "Mother and Child".

[5] As a participant in the government's Alaskan project, he painted pictures of that state to promote protection of the wilderness.

[7][8] While Johnson painted in both water colors and oils, he is best known for his murals, which were funded by the WPA Federal Art Project.

These include the recently restored Airmail, in the Melrose Park Library (Chicago, 1937),[9][10] The Old Days, in the Tuscola, Illinois, post office (1941), People of the Soil in Dickson, Tennessee, which, although photographed for the 1996 book Tennessee Post Office Murals, is no longer open to view.