Art

Local landscape artists are never wanting for inspiration, including pastel artist Martin Johnsen, who’s lived in Santa Maria for 40 years. The local artist and picture framer doesn’t have to travel far to snap an inspiring scene with his digital camera, which he takes home to his studio to work from with his pastels.

Johnsen prefers pastels for their immediacy and the quick creativity he enjoys while capturing local landscapes on canvas, he told the Sun.

“It’s a good medium for experimentation because you can play around with it, do things very quickly, and it has a vibrancy to it because it’s a pure color,” he said. “The pastels are made of the same pigments as oils and watercolor, but there is less in between you and the canvas, it’s just more pure color.”

While he does dabble in depicting cityscapes and buildings, like the local missions, Johnsen feels most at home creating expansive landscapes on smaller canvases. A collection of his work is currently featured at the Valley Art Gallery in the exhibit Elements of Pastel. Johnsen’s been a member of the local artist group since it was known as the Town Center Gallery located in Town Center West, he said.

The exhibit showcases Johnsen’s penchant for depicting the simple beauty of the Central Coast. Local landmarks are given familiar life, whether it’s Lompoc’s flower fields or a dune overlooking the ocean. He always starts with the sky when creating these works, he said, laying down the initial color of the time and day before starting in on the clouds.

“Clouds are tricky, because they can easily become like little cotton balls,” he said. “So, it’s a back and forth. Normally I start with all blue and then put the white on top of it, because the color has to come through it.”

Johnsen has produced quite the output, and has a sizable backlog of work, he explained. He’s also been selling his work on etsy.com for little more than a year, which allows him to keep his work moving out as he creates more.

Most of the customers he gets through the website live outside of California, he said, and either used to live here or have fond memories from vacation visits.

“The thing about landscapes is I think they take people back and everybody can identify with them,” he said. “It reminds them of something or somewhere, but it doesn’t have to be specific.”

Though plenty of his work includes beach scenes or sights familiar to locals, Johnsen doesn’t peg himself down to one subject or theme. Some of his work includes still-life renderings of things as simple as a juicy slice of watermelon or a classic desk-mounted pencil sharpener.

The goal is first finding something interesting, he said, and then making it come to life on the page with his pastels.

“You never know what people are going to connect with, so I try not to trend,” he said. “I’m past the stage of learning the lessons, you have to just feel it and make it work.”

Resource: http://www.santamariasun.com