Martine Johanna is a talented and young Dutch contemporary artist and painter currently based in Amsterdam. Martine, who has also worked as a fashion designer, specializes in acrylic portraits on wood or linen. Johanna pays close attention to textures and patterns of clothes. She uses bio-degradable materials and inks to draw whenever possible and most of her works are build up from mixture of materials water-based oil paint, graphite, ink on wood or canvas. Martine's work is a surrealist landscape inhabited by women who are lost in their own private worlds.
“My very first obsession was for high fashion, folk & ethnic clothing and couture throughout the years, from a young age scrimmaging trough my mother’s closet, shoes and make up. Even though the small village I grew up in did not accept outsider behavior, my imagination never crumbled. Exhaling my emotions in drawing, painting, dancing and creative outbursts. Music and music videos were one of my first loves, I wanted to be a dancer for a long time. Instead, at 19 I went to study art & fashion, obtained a masters degree, became a fashion designer and finally in 2008 fully returned to painting and drawing. I’m still working hard to develop not only my skills technically but also to stay creative over-all. I also teach at the university of Amsterdam, do visual forecastings for big agencies and style fashion shows.”
- Martine Johanna