David Johnson was born across the big river in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He attended public school, walked beans, baled hay, and worked as a busboy and janitor. He graduated with a BFA in Drawing from the University of Iowa where he discovered prints with Virginia Myers. He held jobs as a state liquor store clerk, built grain elevators on the Mississippi River, worked in the K-Mart Pet and Garden Center, picked apples in Washington State and fell off the Christmas tree truck. He put together the Ferris Wheel for the carnival and stacked boxes in the Sears catalog warehouse in Minneapolis. He studied Printmaking again with Fred Hagstrom at the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduated with an MFA from Miami University where he worked with Robert Wolfe.
David taught at Miami University, Anderson College and for 33 years at Ball State University where he taught Foundations, Beginning Drawing, Figure Drawing, Introduction to Printmaking and Relief Printmaking. He has shown his Intaglio, Relief Prints and Books in approximately 400 exhibitions since 1983. His work is in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Boston Public Library, Yale, Oberlin College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Indiana University among others.
