John Koehler’s Art Exhibit Shows off the Work that Saved his Life: My Crazy Botanicals, Opening January 2025
(Virginia Beach, Va., Jan 1, 2025) – John Koehler, a Virginia Beach-based book publisher and visual artist, will unveil his latest art exhibition, My Crazy Botanicals, on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025, at 7 p.m. at the Koehler Artworks Gallery in Virginia Beach. This exhibition highlights artwork he created throughout 2023, a year marked by significant personal challenges for the artist, including a relentless infection, chronic pain, and a shift in mood swings exacerbated by his bipolar disorder.
Amid these struggles, Koehler found refuge in creating photographic collages, capturing the beauty of nature—foliage, trees, plants, and other natural and man-made textures. Uploading 3-5 photos into the Procreate program on his iPad Pro, and using a touch-sensitive Apple Pencil, he meticulously edited the layered photos, fine-tuning colors and applying various filters and opacities to reveal natural abstractions of great beauty. Then he engaged his followers on social media by presenting two side-by-side versions of each artwork, inviting them to vote with a simple “left or right.” The exhibition will reveal the results of this interactive voting process.
“Creating my botanical series kept me grounded, gave me purpose, and truly saved my life,” shared Koehler.
At the intersection of art and healing
As someone who has lived with bipolar disorder for over 35 years, Koehler is upfront about his mental health. He takes Lithium to stabilize his mood and has a strong faith, good doctors, and a circle of friends and family who help him as needed.
“I do art to stabilize my heart and soul,” Koehler said. “I hope the exhibit will inspire others dealing with mental health issues to create their own art to help keep them alive and to inspire others. Because then we can all pay it forward.”
Bipolar by Koehler, the first of 11 books Koehler has written, is an honest tale of how he first learned to live with the malady he inherited. He has used his book to help others deal with the effects of mental and brain illness by giving many talks around Virginia.
“I call this artwork My Crazy Botanicals because I've been called wild and crazy all my life,” said the man who is the 1991 Individual Boomerang World Champion. “Artists see the world differently than others, and sometimes we are called weird or strange because of that. But it is precisely this difference that allows us to show people a new way of seeing the world.”
Koehler Artworks is located at 3705 Shore Drive in Virginia Beach. The event is free and open to the public, encouraging community members to come together and celebrate resilience through art. There will be giveaways and drawings, and a sale of the prints from the My Crazy Botanicals series, along with other works by Koehler. A portion of the show proceeds will benefit the National Association of Mental Illness. To see Koehler’s artwork, please visit www.koehlerartworks.com. To RSVP to the exhibit, please text 757-289-6006.
John Koehler is an award-winning visual artist, graphic designer, book publisher, and author, with nearly 1,000 artworks created since 2018 using an iPad Pro and various photos. He holds a BFA in Communications Arts and Design from Virginia Commonwealth University and completed graduate studies at George Washington University. His experience includes serving as a senior art director at a major D.C. advertising agency and running a design studio. In 2016, he received the Lifetime Achievement Silver Medal from the Advertising Federation of Hampton Roads.
Koehler was also a competitive boomerang athlete, set a world record in 1987, then he had a good day in Perth, Australia to become the 1991 Individual Boomerang World Champion. He also coached the 2002 U.S. Boomerang Team to a World Championship in Kiel, Germany. Koehler later became the director of Younglife Capernaum for five years, working with special needs kids. In 2010 he founded Koehler Books, an Indie publisher of over 800 titles. He lives in Virginia Beach with his artist wife, Patty, and they are proud parents of two artist daughters, Danielle and Kimberly.
