Unveiling our newest addition to the Gallery MAR roster: America Martin! ⁠💛✨
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Martin is an an internationally represented Colombian American painter and sculptor based in Los Angeles.⁠ She describes herself as a “painting anthropologist,” working primarily with paint on canvas and paper to explore the human experience -– and the human form. ⁠
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The magnetic pull of Martin’s work is authentic, generated by both her ability to express a unique gesture that speaks to a universal truth (thus, we recognize it instantly) and her exceptional skill at rendering that truth via the human form. She pulls from the stylistic lessons of the classics and its derivations in indigenous subject matter, while redefining what it is to combine abstract and indigenous motifs.⁠ A concentration on line and flat color reduces Martin’s subjects to their simplest forms and yet challenges our tools of perception. Her accomplished confidence in mark making and gesture is clearly that of a dedicated and prolific artist.

We recently spoke with Martin about her beginnings and the way that she approaches her art. The results were poetry, which we wanted to share here on the blog with you.

A brief bit about myself & the love I have for art —

I fell in love with Vincent Van Gogh when I was 9

I bought a book of his work at a yard sale

Before that had not really been introduced to fine art

That was the Dorothy moment for me

All of a sudden, I literally saw the world around me in color

In a way that I could touch

It was as if seeing his drawings of the everyday items around him

Gave me permission to draw my own world

To translate what I saw and felt into a langue I could share

I used to do chores around my neighborhood and in exchange I’d ask my neighbors if I could draw them. My stepfather is one of the top violists in the country and had attended Juilliard at age 7. I was very lucky; he saw this intense focus as a thing to be supported and I ended up in an apprenticeship with a professor from Art Center who held life drawing class on the weekends.

I worked with him until I was seventeen and received a scholarship at Boston Museum School of Fine Art. I attended one year and left after the teachers said that we all must find other jobs and that art is not something you can depend on — I have been painting ever since and have had over 70 solo shows.

These images are to be shared — to be hung in places that remind you that there is much to be happy about — that there is beauty to be had — and you are the one who can makes it. As Hemingway made famous the borrowed John Donne quote — “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

I say — “no matter what the sky is doing — remember that you are the weatherman — you have the dial of the sun at your fingertips — so why not make it shine.” I am inspired by the other artists in different mediums. I listen to Jazz & marvel in the wealth of literature there is in audio books. I listen to everything from Harvard courses on biology to Yeats poems read aloud & folk tales from around the world.

 

I want to paint and sculpt everything thing I see

I dream of colors not yet named

I see life in line

I see life in blocks of color

 

When I paint

I begin with bold blocks of color

This is very much the sculptor in me

 

I then come in with white lines

to re-capture the idea I was keen on & work out the composition

 

Sometimes these images shift and move

I discover a new angle / a new perspective while in the moment

 

I then come in with oil that I scratch into with the back of my paint brush

I paint in layers and want those layers to build upon one another but also for one’s eye to see how it came to be

 

I love sharing the way I get to a final image

This art love affair has nothing to do with me personally — I often feel like am like a florist — I gather and put together images and colors — tied together with line.

 

We are thrilled to represent her work. Stop by to see us on Main Street to see the new work for yourself. Welcome America!⁠

 

 

Tags: Abstract Art, America Martin, America Martin Utah, American Martin art, contemporary art, fresh art, new artist, Park City Art
Posted in Gallery News