Contemporary green room interior with original oil portrait painting Artwork Girl with Flower Tattoo by artist Talya Johnson hanging on wall.
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Contemporary living room interior decorated with original impressionist landscape oil painting Some Beach by artist Talya Johnson hanging above the couch.
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“Through the lens of beauty, contemporary art has the power to ground us in reality, validating our many difficult experiences all while uplifting us to a higher, more hopeful state of humanity." ~Tali

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.“ ~ Pablo Picasso

Gallery

Portraits and figures original painting collection

Colorful original artwork, oil portraits, commissioned oil portrait paintings, and figure oil paintings by professional Portland Oregon artist Talya Johnson are available to view and purchase in this online gallery. From the very beginning of her journey as a working artist, Tali loved drawing and painting people. Becoming a mother only intensified her passion for portraiture. "Closely examining the human face is something that holds endless fascination for me...As a child I remember painted portraits of both ancestors and strangers hung in the homes I inhabited. The images had a profound impact on my young mind, making me feel known and seen.”

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Available for sale

Original Oil Painting Landscape Art

The beautiful Pacific Northwest is the perfect natural inspiration for Tali's creative process. Her fine art painting features diverse landscape views and scenic panoramas of mountain ranges, peaceful hillsides, fertile river valleys, rugged coastal vistas, and picturesque country farms. In this landscape painting  art gallery you will find both abstract landscape paintings painted with thick palette knife strokes, and colorful impressionist oil paintings-artwork for sale that usually began as Plein air work studies. Most of this collection was created on location in Alaska, Washington and Oregon. Wall art of seascapes and treescapes by Tali are a particular favorite of art lovers who enjoy how color and texture add further meaning to conceptual painterly motifs. 

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On the Easel

Still Life Paintings

Still life painting or the painting of an arrangement inanimate objects has been around for thousands of years. For Talya Johnson, this traditional genre is a relatively new interest filled with endless possibilities. Her practice of creating still lifes began out of necessity-studying objects in real life light and atmosphere in order to render them convincingly. But once flowers, food, and household objects came into the mix, the narrative and symbolic qualities of these every-day objects sparked a creative delight that continues to drive Tali to explore new themes. Fueled by her love color, texture, and harmonic asymmetrical compositions, Tali's enjoys bringing together unlikely combinations. Many of the modern still lifes she paints are from collaborative arrangements created during group paint togethers with other local artists. By carefully combining varied personal treasures into the mix, she instills her visual art with a collective diversity that is greater than the sum of its parts. 

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Portrait painting blog

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identity art · psychological self portrait · psychology of portrait art ·
51 Oil Portraits from Life: Community Remains part 4, artists identity
by Talya Johnson
The questions of wearing spectacles came up quite a bit in the portrait sessions. In general, painting someone wearing glasses is considerably more challenging than painting them without glasses. It isn't the frames themselves that make it a challenge but the actual prescription of the eyewear that distorts facial features that can be problematic. However, people who always wear glasses rather than just on occasion or as an accessory, can be difficult to identify even for their closest loved ones without their glasses. I left the choice up to the sitters and gave myself a little more time after our painting session to those who felt their eyeglasses were an essential part of their looks or identity.
observational art · portrait likeness · seeing like an artist ·
51 Oil portraits from life: Community Remains part 3, the intuitive slow art of seeing
by Talya Johnson
One of the reasons realistic portrait painting is challenging, particularly in our age dominated by photographic imagery, is that there is very little room for error, or even interpretation, when capturing likeness of  a specific human being. If an eye painted a millimeter too large or small, or a nose is missing a certain bump or specific slope, the entire image can unravel into a portrait of someone else. A simple selfie provides the sitter and viewers a far more precise and culturally "reliable" representation of my subject. However, "likeness . . . is certainly a different thing from what a photograph gives, which may or may not present a very true sense of the subject" points out Oregon artist George Johanson in his book Equivalents, Portraits of 80 Oregon Artists. "One's physical image seems changeable . . . The closer and more carefully one looks, the more the face changes from one viewing to the next" (11).
oil portrait · painting process · portrait painting technique ·
51 Oil portraits from life: Community Remains part 2, precedent and process
by Talya Johnson

I usually start my portraits by sketching with a thin layer of oil color and solvent, and a tiny bit of linseed oil. This dry brush layer is translucent and easy to wipe off for needed corrections. Anderson uses a neutral mix, but I find myself gravitating to a warmer pigment in the underpainting. Beneath all our varied melanin producing skin cells our human flesh is red, pulsing with life giving blood. Lately I've favored Gamblin's Transparent Earth Red for this sketching under-layer of my painted skin tones. Red ochre has long been used by artists to depict the magic of being alive. The Gamblin color is a synthetic red oxide; I enjoy its greater vibrancy as compared to its ochre-based counterparts like burnt sienna or yellow ochre.

Community Remains · contemporary portrait painting ·
51 Oil Portraits from Life: Community Remains, part one commencement of a dream
by Talya Johnson
The first art school critique of my portrait paintings made it apparent that accurately representing my subjects on canvas was not enough to engage academic viewers. While I'd had relative success engaging the sentimentality of a conservative audience, the contemporary art scene was a world apart. Professors educated during the sixties and seventies held on to the "common critical trope" rejecting "the importance of portraiture to modernist art (West 187). I received even more push-back from graduate students who felt representational portraits were "anachronistic, inert, [and] crusty - a form of vanity exclusive to the rich" (Patrovich).

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Pixels | Trusted printing and manufacturing

We have entrusted pixel.com aka Fine Art America as our drop-shipping vendor for open edition prints and artistic home decor accessories. Started in 2006 Pixels is the largest marketplace with museum quality print-on-demand technology. Their commitment to quality products and customer satisfaction has long been evident whether purchasing wall decor as gallery wrap art, framed canvas or poster. Their beautiful canvas art complements the interior design of any room, either professionally decorated or diy. Pixels offers many quality lifestyle accessories that compliment our happy designs perfectly. We have been working with this company for almost a decade.

All images sent to pixels are professionally photographed and color corrected to ensure the closest match possible to honor the intent of the original works. Products are regularly ordered and inspected by us personally to ensure quality and a faithful rendition of original works.

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