Johanna Spinks.

Johanna Spinks is a British-born, Los Angeles-based portrait artist whose work hangs in museums, galleries, and private collections all over the world. Mentored by the late Everett Raymond Kinstler, who painted eight presidential portraits, Johanna’s style can be best described as classical oil portraiture with a contemporary palette knife twist.

Over her 25-year portrait career, her work has received recognition from the United States Congress, The California State Senate, and multiple Oil Painters of America National shows as well as been featured in the New York Times, American Artist Magazine, International Artist Magazine, Where Women Create and many others. She has painted notable sitters from Kip Forbes to Kevin Costner and has five portraits in the permanent collection of The Players’ Club of New York including Norman Rockwell, Rex Harrison and actress Angela Lansbury. The Portrait Society of America awarded Johanna a “Certificate of Recognition” for her dedicated volunteer work as its’ California State Ambassador, a three-year term. In 2008, Spinks was awarded The Daler-Rowney “Excellence in Painting” Award at OPA National.

In addition to her vast portfolio of commissioned work, Johanna has worked on two widely-celebrated public portrait projects in the cities of Ventura and Malibu, each time working with a different local newspaper, with each sitter being interviewed alongside a painted life sketch. The 58 paintings that made up the “Face of Ventura” now sits in the permanent collection of the Museum of Ventura County and earned Spinks a Mayor’s Art Award for “Artist in the Community” 2012.

The “Face of Malibu” and the subsequent “Face of Malibu Rebuilds” portrait series (capturing people who their lost homes in the Woolsey Fire) resulted in Johanna receiving a Dolphin “Citizen of the Year” Award 2019 for her artwork contribution to the community.

The Rebuild series of 17 watercolor portraits and interviews, conducted by Johanna and printed in The Malibu Times, was accepted into The Boone Special Collections and Archives at Pepperdine University in March 2021. The Face of Malibu’s 61 oil life sketches was accepted into the same archival collection in August 2021.