Martine Johanna and Jen Mann.

Martine Johanna and Jen Mann are both contemporary artists who specialise in portrait paintings. They both produce pieces which focus on psychology and feeling which gives deep meaning to their work; these meanings may be personal to themselves or interactive with the public. 

Both artists use a very similar colour palette consisting of very cool shades such as cool pinks and blues as well as pastel shades and some more unconventional colour schemes when it comes to portraiture. They also both delve into surrealistic elements in their very realistic portraiture, this includes overlapping images and surreal imagery. 

Martine Johanna is an artist and illustrator based in Amsterdam the Netherlands. She likes to use bio-degradable materials when painting and creates pieces using a mixture of layered materials including watercolours, oils, graphite and acrylics; these may be used on paper, wood panels or canvas.

As well as realistic colour schemes, and realistic style painting she also used more unusual colour schemes which guide her work a more surreal appearance much like Jen Manns work, only Martines work is not as surreal in terms of colour and more in terms of the imagery used.

Martines piece have been inspired by many things such as folk art, music ect. But much like Jen Manns work she also concentrates on deeper meanings as seen in the piece below 'phantom limbs'.

Jen Mann however is a Toronto based artist who paints pieces inspired by identity and relationships, this interacts with the public well as many can relate to her pieces of work. Like Martine Johanna she uses interesting and surreal colour schemes such as pinks, blue, ect these convey each ,essays and are carefully picked out to make the piece interact with the viewer.

Jen Manns work is worked in a very different way to Johannas, her pieces are created from one corner to another rather than working in layers so she does not miss any small details. These are crated in a large scale using oil paints. 

Her pieces are very meaningful much like Johannas work but I feel as though the ,earnings are both personal and public making her pieces very interesting to look at. An example of this is the painting seen below, created to show how the things we try to hide can escape and consume us even though we try so hard to hide them. 

Both artists are quite similar in terms of colour, meaning and subject matter and are also very relevant ,to my own theme 'identity'. When I saw these artists work they i ideally caught my eye and I knew I wanted to research into them, it wasn't until I started doing research when I realised the relevance to my own art project which I feel shows how the meaning behind the pieces are quite clear and interact with the audience well. These artists have inspired me to create pieces in a very similar method, but also to spark feeling in the viewer much like these artists do in their own as the public are able to come to their own conclusions about the artwork allowing them to relate to the pieces themselves which I feel us very effective and makes these two artists very alike.