America Martin currently at JoAnne Artman Gallery! www.joanneartmangallery.com
y February 1st, 2014
JoAnne Artman Gallery is thrilled to welcome America Martin for her annual Solo Exhibition this February and March. America will be unveiling a mix of three different new series inspired by her recent travels. Discover America’s vision for her captivating new series as she describes her inspirations for the “Native American”, “Bathers” and “Still Lives” Series.
On the Native American Series:
The mountains and plains of New Mexico are vast. The sky is constantly changing, while the land lies still and lets the wind come rolling in, full of memory and motion.
Last summer I attended the enormous July pow-wow in Taos, New Mexico. I appreciated that I was a guest as I took photos and listened to a very visual story -- a story of people who come together to celebrate, to commemorate and to remember.
From the beginning of time, men and women have created ceremonies and rituals to commemorate particular moments of victory or loss, beauty or pain. These celebrations are as important as the seasons, for they mark time by adding punctuation to our lives. My Native American paintings are a series or works inspired by the places and people I met. They are not meant to be representational. I paint from memory, and from a reverence for the dignity of the men and women and children whom I met and observed, who gathered together to honor, not only their own ancestors and their own history, but time itself.
On Bathers:
This summer, I traveled throughout Europe with my husband in celebration of his 40th birthday. We stopped in Aix-en-Provence, the home of one of my all time favorite painters, Paul Cézanne. There I was able to see his studio, the hills, the trees, the jagged mountains, the color of the sky. I felt as if I was in one of his paintings. The visit gave me a better understanding and a sense of kinship with this master's work, which I have studied and loved for so many years.
Of all Cezzane's works, I love his series "The Bathers" best. The poses and gestural forms, the many different renditions he did again and again, changing and augmenting shapes, form and color. As a painter, I am naturally drawn to the female form, so I chose to create a series of bathers in homage to Cezanne and the subject that so inspired him. I wanted to echo the grandness, the sweeping lines, the color, the dimension -- but in my own voice. I love to work when my whole arm is in motion, so I enjoy working in a large format.
Although Cezzane is known as one of the fathers of Impressionism, to me he was one of the most modern of his generation. I painted my own series of bathers in reverence and homage to Cezanne, one of my all-time favorite painters.
On Still Lives:
I love to paint still lives, to echo the beauty in flowers and shapes of bowls and fruit. Each week I gather flowers on my walks in the hills or at the local farmers markets where I buy the fruit and eat while I paint. But before I eat a piece of fruit, I usually paint a still life of it. Together these paintings form a small series of still lives in which I take liberties with color and form. These are cheerful renditions from my studio.
America Martin’s work will inspire, provoke, engage and mesmerize
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