Please click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.

Detail of "Polar Bear Mothers & Cubs"

Anouk Johanna

P.O. Box 2036

Anouk Johanna is a Californian artist / teacher working in many different media.

 

She is an accomplished pen and ink artist, painter, ceramic sculptor and printmaker as well as a jewelry designer and scrimshaw artist whose work has been sold nationally and internationally for more than 30 years to private collectors through shows and her website as well as through galleries. Her scrimshaw art has been written up in many national and international magazines.

 

At Left:    "Polar Bear Mothers & Cubs", hand-engraved and painted images on a fossilized walrus "netsinker" (about 5000 yrs old) placed on a handmade Bolivian rosewood stand inlayed with mammoth and fossil walrus ivory.  Not for Sale - Value $3100

Anouk supported herself and her two daughters with her scrimshaw art for 30 years and for the last 10 years also with teaching art.

Anouk grew up in Amsterdam, Holland where she studied drama as well as costume and textile design and was part of a traveling theater group before she switched to sculpture at the prestigious Rietveld Akademie. In 1969 she was offered an opportunity to travel to the USA to study sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in Brooklyn, New York. She married an American sculptor and had two wonderful and creative daughters but always kept making art even when they were very small.

 

At left: "Robert Geldoff", watercolor, $200 (no mat or frame)

Sculpture evolved into fiber arts and next jewelry, metal-smithing as well as scrimshaw (on fossilized ivory).

In 1980 Anouk and her daughters settled in Santa Cruz CA where she she studied painting, jewelry and printmaking at Cabrillo College and fell in love with Monotype Printmaking in a month long workshop with Howard Ikomoto.  Afterwards she started taking workshops with well known artists like John Maxon and Joseph Zirker.

 

In 2000 she started teaching art to children as well as adults at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center utilizing all her experience in the different art forms she had studied and excelled in over the years. She finds a lot of inspiration in children's art for her own work and in return works with children on projects that she is engaged in with her own art. "If you want to learn how to teach start teaching children. They are honest, direct, challenging, critical and very close to the "Creative Source"..."

 

At left:  "Purple Iris", watercolor, $150, no mat & frame

"Islands", monotype, $200, no mat & frame

"Fall in the Mountains",

Watercolor,  $200, no mat & frame

Of monotype Anouk says: “It was love at first sight because you can incorporate so many other media with it, experiment, discover and develop new and unique techniques continuously. When you pull a monotype print from the press it often looks like somebody else intervened in the process. I think it is this transformative aspect that I like so much about monotype. It continuously shows you new directions to take  with your artwork and it is a relatively fast process in comparison to pure painting.”

 

A monotype is a one-of-a-kind  image that has been printed from a plate that has a completely smooth surface and has no repeatability to it other than a ghost. A monoprint  is also a one-of-a-kind print from a plate but has a matrix on it like a stencil, an engraving, a collographic element etc. which can be repeated in the next print. It can also be an etching plate, woodcut, collograph etc. that has been inked in differently to obtain a new look.

 

Presently Anouk is teaching watercolor painting in which she incorporates monotype printmaking as a way to start a painting.  She finds it to be a wonderful way of passing on techniques and exchanging ideas.

Anouk's work encompasses:

  

Printmaking (mostly monotype and monoprint)

Watercolors

Acrylics

Oils

Drawing (pen and ink and other dry media)

Scrimshaw Jewelry and Art Objects

Ceramic Sculpture 

Collage

Mixed Media

At left:  "Flowers and Pumpkins", watercolor, $350, no mat & frame

 "Jade"

watercolor

Not For Sale

 "Cathy"

watercolor

Private Collection

 "Nancy"

watercolor

$200, no mat & frame