In 1927, after spending some time in the town of Horten, Espolin Johnson relocated to Oslo, where he studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry and Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts under Axel Revold and Halfdan Strøm.

There he developed a special layering and scraping technique using soot early on in almost exclusively black and white.

[1][3] Espolin Johnson also decorated the Coastal Express vessel MS Harald Jarl (1960) with several motifs from Petter Dass's Nordlands Trompet.

In an interview with NRK TV in connection with the opening of the Espolin Gallery in 1992, Espolin Johnson stated that, when he looked back at his artistic work, it was the illustrations for Vett og Uvett and Bojer's Den siste viking that gave him the most pleasure.

In 1994, together with Arthur Arntzen, Espolin Johnson coauthored the book Og langsomt kom lyset (And Slowly Came the Light), which discusses Northern Norway and its art, with 22 of his own works in focus.