YES: New Works by Colombian-American Artist America Martin

FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE                                                          

JoAnne Artman
Gallery, Presents in the Main Gallery:

YES: New Works by Colombian-American Artist America Martin

February 6, 2014
– March 31, 2014

Artist Reception:
February 6th, 2014 from 6-8pm to coincide with Laguna Beach ArtWalk Please
RSVP: 949.510.5481 by February 1st, 2014

JoAnne Artman Gallery

326 N. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, 92651

Contact:  JoAnne Artman

Telephone:  949-510-5481

E-mail: joanneartman@aol.com

Web site: www.joanneartmangallery.com

Open Wed-Sunday, 11-5 & by appointment; First Thursday of every month 6-8pm

YES

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.