Wendy Johnson Costa is an artist living in the northwest corner of Connecticut. She is a fierce advocate for the Earth, and uses her infrared photography to bring attention to its beauty and fragile state. She presents nature as a force to be revered, while at the same time hinting at signs of nature falling prey to our accelerating climate crisis.

She earned a BFA at the University of Massachusetts in 1982 and an MFA at the University of Michigan in 1989. She has also done summer studies at Parsons School of Design in Paris and Tuscany, The Cleveland Institute of Art in Provence, Vermont Studio Center, and Maine College of Art and Design.

After working with mixed media photographer Joanne Leonard at Michigan, Costa found her voice well suited to alternative media photography. During her MFA studies, Costa produced a dual series of landscapes emerging through chain link fences, using the fences as filters: one set of large-format painted canvases with another set in correspondence with a set of black and white darkroom prints hand-tinted with colored pencil.

Following graduate school, she continued mixed media photography by toning Polaroid transfers and emulsion lifts with colored pencil and watercolor. These layered images of photography with drawing created an intensified, almost jewel-like reality.

Seeking a larger format photographic medium than Polaroids afforded, she began a new chapter with digital infrared photography in 2014, and studied with infrared masters Laurie Klein and Kyle Klein Perler. Costa found that monochrome infrared can evoke the powerful mystery of nature with stark contrasts and unexpected value renditions.

Costa’s work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, and has won state and national recognition. Most recently, five of her infrared landscape photographs of Litchfield County were purchased by the State of Connecticut for the Litchfield County Courthouse in Torrington, CT. Her photo “Walking on the Sky” took second place honors for photography in the 2025 Members Show at Washington Art Association in Washington Depot, CT with Jane Eckert as juror. Her photograph “Innisfree Waterfall” won a $5000 first prize in Indian Mountain School’s 2018 competition, “Water,” in Lakeville, CT. The jurors were Sandra Boynton, Agnes Gund, and Craig F. Starr. She has had solo exhibitions at the Schumacher Gallery at Westover School in Middlebury, CT, the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, CT, and The Smithy in New Preston, CT. Costa’s work has also been chosen for group exhibitions at Steep Rock’s 100th Anniversary Exhibit in Spring Hill Vineyards in New Preston, CT, Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT, Black Box Photo Gallery in Portland, OR, NWCT Arts Connected Showcase in Washington Depot, CT, Photo Place Gallery in Middlebury, VT, Loft Artists Association in Stamford, CT, and the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA.