Martine Johanna

Martine Johanna is a contemporary portrait painter from the Netherlands. I stumbled upon her work on Instagram around 2 years ago and have become fascinated with her and how she has developed as an artist. She works across many mediums that include acrylic paint, Photoshop recolouring and watercolour. Her work ‘Arsenic Blues’ conveys a dark scenario through the eyes of the woman in the painting.

The hand is placed up to the mouth like she is worried, or chewing her nails. Yet the quality of the painting, the translucence of the hand fading into the shirt and the hair, gives the viewer a sense of loss and that whatever the girl in the painting is focusing on, it may be too late. My work has taken a very direct turn after looking through her portfolio online making her the main influence over my current studio work. Martine Johanna’s work is very smooth, almost like it was a print out from a computer. And to get that finish from acrylics absolutely astonishes me. Alex Nicholson from Juxtapoz magazine says, “Martine Johanna has thrived on balancing a multi-faceted career, but it wasn’t until a recent collaboration with Dutch Fashion House ‘Spijkers en Spijkers’ that her work found the perfect alliance of exhibition artwork and fashion”. Johanna is used to working in different physical contexts; she is well exhibited across Europe and often has solo shows. Her work can also be found in the second series of ‘True Detective’, and in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar. I think what attracts people to her work is the hyper realistic traits her paintings have and the quality of how she paints, it looks incredibly painstaking and carefully thought out.

Johanna is such an inspiration to me because she is creating portraits that link strongly with my own contemporary practice yet she is working with television producers and major fashion magazines.