Zach Johnsen

Posted on: February 3, 2010 by admin

ART COLLABORATION: Coda, Nightrain, Koa Bug, Bamboo Pocket Rocket

WEBSITE: www.zenvironments.com

Zachariah Johnsen is an illustrator, fine artist, graphic designer and art director currently living in Portland, OR in the United States. His concentration is pen & ink, watercolor, and mixed media works on paper. His medium of choice is the micron pen and he uses them exhaustively to describe a world of ghouls, monsters, and misfits, the shady characters in everyday life, but just hidden from normal view. Zach focuses on the more ignored side of life on the sides of people and places that visitors rarely see. In Zach’s world, most of the people have obvious human/animal hybrids that can’t be hidden. The corrupt politican is a hideous beast wielding an ax and smoking a cigar. The hollywood actress is a washed-up, half rat w/ open sores surrounded by a mob of rabid birds. The family portrait is a gaggle of jellydrop characters and mutated fish creatures.

Zach has lent this fantastic world and his unique style of frenetic pen lines and loose, splashy water-based media to a number of surfaces and media across the industries. At 30 years of age, he has created commissioned work for patrons around the globe, created original works for print and publications, skateboards, skis, furniture, sneakers, snowboards, clothing and apparel. Zach co-founded and art directed the NY/CA based clothing and apparel company Tank Theory.

Having gained recognition across the United States, Australia, Europe and beyond, Zach is now concentrating on expanding his visual range into paintings on canvas and installation works to video and motion graphics.  With a number of exhibitions, projects and published works under his belt, Zach has become recognized as an artist whose future is much brighter than the often dark content of his work.