About the Cover Artist

Born in Indiana, Rick Johnston has always been a hard worker and was a successful, and driven, manager for a Fortune 500 company. In 2015, after working for 72 days without a day off, he began to feel ill and eventually could barely walk or speak. A stroke-like event had left him unable to use his right side, with migraine, vertigo, double vision, apraxia, insomnia, and other symptoms typical after stroke.

Rick credits his speech-language pathologist, Shelly Hunt, for not giving up on him and bringing him a tool that uncovered a new skill, which helped him recover other skills. She suggested Rick try painting as a tool to regain hand use and language abilities. At first, Rick thought she was being silly. He had little to no experience with visual arts, and it made no sense to him to try something new to recover all his old abilities. Then, to his surprise, an attempt to paint on index cards recovered his understanding of color and some of his old drive. He began filling index cards—one after the next—then paper, then canvasses. Rick’s Facebook page, The Bearded Painter, was started by his daughter as his paintings filled their home.

Rick now paints every day and has sometimes painted for days on end because of his insomnia. His style is unusual as he paints with his nondominant left hand, and, without knowing why, usually with the canvas wrong way up, sometimes flipping it halfway through a piece.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led hour-long painting classes online attended by thousands. Rick expresses great joy in leading these sessions, saying, “helping people forget about what was going on in the outside world, however briefly, to focus on creating art is one of the best feelings ever.”