Award-winning Los Angeles portrait artist Johanna Spinks knows faces inside out. For years she worked as a top Hollywood makeup artist to the stars applying her artistry to many famous faces before they went under the lights.
Over the years she became increasingly frustrated by the demands of the business and decided to devote herself full-time to her love of classical portraiture – still painting the face, but from now on exclusively in oil on canvas. Today she steadfastly observes the grand tradition of oil portraiture and painting after studying in museums around the world the works of the Old Masters from Frans Hal and Velasquez to John Singer Sargent, Sorolla and Phillip de Laszlo.
Her work, which also includes still life and landscape, has won her international acclaim being featured in The New York Times, earning juried recognition, awards and show acceptances from various art institutions including American Artist Magazine, Art Talk, Oil Painters of America, The Portrait Society of Atlanta and The California Art Club. She was also hosted by the French town of Dinan, after winning a coveted painting award grant, two paintings from that trip being acquired by the town’s museum. Her affiliations also include the prestigious National Arts Club, New York, The Players’ Club of New York, Allied Artists of America, The Artists Fellowship of New York, and The Portrait Society of America (Johanna has been proud to serve as its CA State Ambassador, a three-year term.
Johanna has trained under her mentor, master artist Everett Raymond Kinstler N.A., painter of seven American presidents and over 50 cabinet members, at The Arts Student League of New York and The National Academy of Design, New York. Johanna has taught privately, and also at the California Art Institute, Westlake Village, and The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, Van Nuys, CA. She gives frequent public portrait demos of her technique at the invitation of various CA art groups.
Her paintings can be found in public and private collections across the globe including The Players’ Club of New York, The Episcopalian Diocese of Los Angeles, The Reformed Theological Seminary, North Carolina, The British Heritage Museum, Canada, The Museum of La Grande Vigne, Dinan, France, and The Forbes Family (Forbes magazine). email: johanna@johannaspinks.com website www.johannaspinks.com phone 310 384 7029
JULIAN GONZALES• Open Studio, May 4 from 6-9 p.m. • Photographer • Studio 95
