Painter and sculptor Ralph Johnson, professor emeritus of art at the University of California, Davis, died March 23 in Trinidad, Calif., of cancer, at the age of 68. Noted for his whimsical approach to art, Professor Johnson had exhibited his work in both one-person and group shows in the United States and Europe. In 1978, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Professor Johnson was born and reared on his family's farm near Vancouver, Wash. He served in the Navy during World War II, and following the war, began to pursue a pre-engineering degree at Chaffey College in Ontario, Calif. His growing interest in art, however, prompted him to apply to UC Berkeley, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in art. He later taught drawing courses at Berkeley. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the Museum Art School in Portland, Ore. In 1957, he became a professor of art at UC Davis, and retired in 1988. He served as department chair from 1981-1983. While at UC Davis, Professor Johnson, hired for his drawing and painting talent and one of the early members of the university's art department, became the department's first sculpture instructors. As he put it in a 1984 interview, "we wanted to get sculpture started and I got talked into teaching sculpture, because I had one course in sculpture at UC Berkeley." Teaching sculpture courses proved pivotal in Professor Johnson's life. As he recalled in a 1983 interview about the UC Davis art department, "This place took off. It allowed me the freedom to do almost anything I wanted to do -- even more things than I wanted to do which, at times, were wild and frustrating. But, in the long run, the opportunity to take on sculpture and get involved in it, for example, has certainly shaped my life." Until Professor Johnson began teaching sculpture, he had been known primarily for his paintings that ranged from geometric abstractions based on natural forms to more recognizable subjects done with almost hallucinatory qualities of mood and color. In 1959, he won a California State Fair first-place award for painting. Professor Johnson's sculptures were meticulously crafted and frequently based on furniture forms. Increasingly, the works were invested with his wit, humor, love of irony and piercing intellect, according to L. Price Amerson Jr., director of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery at UC Davis. A retrospective exhibition of Professor Johnson's works at the Nelson Gallery in 1980 included many of his humorous and surreal chair sculptures, which became an obsession with him in the mid-1960s. After Professor Johnson retired from teaching, his artistic dialogue with sculptural expression and experience seemed to become even deeper and more personal, Amerson recalls. Galleries and museums at which Professor Johnson exhibited his work include the Portland Art Museum, E.B. Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, San Francisco Art Institute, Pasadena Art Museum, Cologne Art Fair, Cheltenham School of Art in England, and Taft Museum in Cincinnati, Davis Art Center, and the Judith Weintraub Gallery in Sacramento. During the last few years of his life, Professor Johnson lived in Humboldt County, where he had a sculpture in process at the time of his death. During his retirement, he traveled often to Ireland, a country he loved. He is survived by his three children, Clay C. Johnson, of Winters; Jennifer M. Johnson, of Point Reyes; and Devan A. Johnson, of Arcata; his sister, Norma Deweerdt, of St. Augustine, Fla; a grandson, Miles B. Johnson, of Winters, his niece, Cassie Wynveen, of Newport, Ore., and his stepmother, Erna Johnson, of Tracy, Minn. Memorial contributions may be made to the Hospice of Humboldt, 2010 Myrtle Ave., Eureka, CA 95502.