Going Under the Knife:

An Exploration of Palette Knife Portraiture by Ventura painter Johanna Spinks

Opens Friday, April 1 at the Tool Room Gallery, 6-9 pm

Just over two years ago, award-winning portrait artist Johanna Spinks decided to take a risk with her familiar paint brush: putting it down. In its place, she picked up a palette knife and began using the metal artist’s tool for her private, non-commissioned work in order to paint the people around her. Her Tool Room Gallery exhibition, entitled Going Under the Knife, showcases a sampling of this palette knife work. Much of it was done from life sittings, depicting those near and dear to her and those who captured her heart on her travels through India, Europe and the high Sierras. Johanna’s mentor and seven-time presidential portrait painter Everett Raymond Kinstler describes her palette knife portrait work as "a refreshing departure and journey into creative portraiture.”

The British-born Spinks is as much a storyteller as she is a classically trained portrait artist. Whether she is bringing the vibrancy of a local community to life through her Face of Ventura and Face of Malibu portrait projects or rendering a model in an imagined Parisian interior, Johanna’s whimsical and romantic style is the signature attribute of her award-winning work.

The artist’s background serves as a good explanation for this. She started out telling stories as a young journalist who emigrated from the UK to New York at just 22 years old. She later became a top Hollywood makeup artist, using her brushes to bring magazine pages, TV and film to life. When she decided to put down the powder brushes to pursue oil portraiture full time, she began receiving international acclaim and was featured in publications including The New York Times, American Artist Magazine and Art Talk. Johanna won The Daler Rowney Award for Painting Excellence at Oil Painters of America National Show in 2008. More recently, fifty-eight of Johanna’s portraits, all painted from life, were accepted into the permanent collection of The Museum of Ventura County in California, an honor she holds most dear.

With her unique style, Johanna has been on the teaching faculty of The California Art Institute and The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art and is frequently asked to give public painting demonstrations of her life painting techniques. She also received a certificate of distinction for her three year term as the California State Ambassador for the Portrait Society of America.