Mid-Winter, 1954
Oil on canvas
Amorphous biomorphic shapes. Ungrounded. Line defines shape. Color fills space. Neutrals (Browns, grays, white ranges). Field is ambiguous. Arthur Dove.
Untitled, 1955
Oil on canvas
Most shapes occupy their own, untouched space. Lack of cellular interaction. Ghostly lines at best near brushier interactions. Tentative. Cf. crossing marks that move towards a circle from the inside out, rather than outlined, then filled.
Untitled, 1955
Oil on canvas
Line continues suggesting figure, land, though largely inconclusive. Cf. Miro. David Smith. Early Rothko. White increases, neutrals decrease. Faint yellow emerges.
Untitled, 1957
Oil on gypsum board
Aerial perspective, if not flat, compositional design/decoration. Lines thicken. Shapes shift from organic to more geometric. Space is clarified, organized, compartmentalized. Range of whites dominate. Tan and one circle of bluish gray.
Untitled, 1957
Oil on canvas
Division in two parts. One line (white or gray?). Relative shades between black and white but in only three shades. Square at 45 degree angle inside is a black diamond that just fits. Or two triangles? Again, the suggestion of comnections to form wholes that are completed by the viewer. An idea and a visual phenomenon. Rotating space.
Untitled, 1958
Oil on canvas
Square, larger canvas (painting white). Gray circle is central. Off-white framed squares radiate from center reasserting painting frame NOT what's at center. So, squaring a circle. Cf. Irwin. Line is therefore thick progressive boundaries. Not fussy. Advancing/receding image.
Rain (Study), 1958
Oil on canvas
Untitled, 1958
Oil on canvas
Untitled, 1959
Oil on canvas
Grouping of three. Dividing space both horizontally/vertically. No lines. Shape and color exploration in both low and high contrasts. Off-white/gray connects all three as a framing/defining device.
The Garden, 1958
Oil and sound objects on wood
Attempting to get a handle on whether door or window. Real or imagined (llusion/perception) vision. Tonal shifts in gray and brown. Title suggests aerial perspective rather than frontal.
Burning Tree, 1961
Wood and metal
Optical teeth. Free-standing. Wood and metal (brown and gray). Symmetrical sculpture that can be taken as a whole. Therefore, no privileged view nor hierarchy. Rotating optics. Upward, energetic movement.
Buds, 1959
Oil on canvas
Soft neutrals. Five rows and seven columns of pencilled-in circles are centered with room for one more row at both top and bottom. Emphasizes the push/pull of presence and absence. Spatial ambiguity. Circles against squares in multiples.
Heather, 1958
Oil on canvas
Soft brushy, not fussy. Two rectangles (one yellow, the other tan) divided vertically and contained entirely within the frame. Left, right. Windows.
The Heavenly Race (Running), 1959
Oil and graphite on canvas
Repetition of shapes, tiled from top down in three rows. Rectangles that are rounded across each bottom. Divided space horizontally. One filled, the other empty. Again, these dualities (presence/absence, line/shape, pattern/nothing). Static, white noise.
Desert Rain, 1957
Reconciling vertical and horizontal across a middle. Under painting as yellow (effect and symbol of light) is subdued under gray, cloudy haze. Overcast like the general viewing context of the exhibition. Yes!
Untitled, 1959
Oil on canvas
Cross-cutting the dark circle (establishing structure/division, a void within a field of white nothing, but which is which?). Cf. earlier, biomorphic searching brushwork. Uneven triangular divisions alternate producing movement and rhythm. Cf. toothy sculpture, Burning Tree.
Horizon, 1960
Oil on canvas
Untitled, 1960
Untitled, 1960
Oil on canvas
Untitled, 1960
Oil on canvas
A gallery full of interplay between shape, pattern, rhythm and slight color and tonal shifts. Soft touch and meditation. Shortcomings of cameras are revealed that doubtfully intended. Asserting the priority of a direct, intimate relationship with the work. This is in direct conflict with institutional (legal) restrictions. The 3 feet, line on the floor? The optics concern emerges temporally with Op Art also recalling the pointillism of Seurat, Lichtenstein, and Irwin, the latter who I assume became aware and studied Martin's work during this period. Cf. mid-60s dot paintings. Like webbing and screen (scrim); when doors and windows are defined by light position (inside or out). Asserting center. Pencilling (drawing), then painting. Curious dots at edges relate pattern of paint to possible repositioning of stretching canvas. Staple marks? If so, meticulous at every stage of her process. Yet, not fussy. Again, duality. Compartments/frames of stuttering eyes. Blinds. Ovals=opticals. Painted boundaries, again to emphasize interior vision, what's inside the frame.
Untitled, 1960
Oil on canvas
Little Sister, 1962
Oil ink, and brass nails on canvas and wood
The Islands, 1961
Oil and graphite on canvas
Islands No. 4, 1961
Oil on canvas
Brown Composition, 1961
Oil on canvas
Falling Blue, 1963
Oil and graphite on canvas
Group of 4, large squares (one on each wall). Denim. Hard not to consider the bench of similar dimension and pattern. Even, regular all-over fields that at once contrast with titles, Pollock as "all-over" progenitor, and her own emerging patterns of symmetrical, non-hierarchical tendencies. No figures. No grounds. No space. Alternating drawing and painting, line and shape/color.
A Grey Stone, 1963
Oil on canvas
White Stone, 1964
Oil and graphite on canvas
Untitled, 1964
Acrylic, graphite, and colored pencil on canvas
Grass, 1967
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
The Rose, 1965 (conjures DeFeo but with such different means to a flower) Natural titles (organic) contrast with image in terms of literal, visual connection. So, process, pattern, and time. Color is soft and subtle. Cf. with the dynamics of LeWitts wall-drawings.
Adventure, 1967
Acrylic on graphite on canvas
Adventure. Ruled paper, graph paper, plain paper? (also, literally, toward an arrival, i.e., becoming)
Untitled, 1959
Oil and ink on canvas
Greater personal interest in the pictorial play in terms of depth and spatial orientation including external references.
Words, 1961
Ink on paper mounted on canvas
Works on paper. Space can be divided infinitely, but really with only so many plays between lined grid and painted mark (shape). So, tenuous drawn lines have become structuring/defining element while painted elements are the phenomena. Frame color choices become important or at least apparent.
Untitled V, 1981
Acrylic on graphite on canvas
Untitled #12, 1981
Acrylic and colored pencil on canvas
Collision of drawn, printed, and painted field.
Untitled IX, 1982
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Could be siding or just drawn lines dividing/dissolving.
Untitled #8, 1974
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Pinks and blues of twilights. Patterns and waves (cf. light, daily rhythms, routines). Top down or bottom up? Still maintains the blankness/emptiness/whiteness/wholeness at top and bottom.
Untitled #4, 1975
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Draw first, then paint between the lines. Set the rules, then play the game.
Untitled #12, 1984
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Whitewash over pencil.
Fiesta, 1985
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
With My Back to the World, 1991
Acrylic on canvas, six panels
This insistence of leaving something same at top and bottom suggests a priority of the horizontal, the horizon, and therefore landscape. So, I am standing in the face of her sublime vision a la Friedrich, for example. An intense, internal quest refers to its external counterpart (the romantic micro/macro continuum). Standing before paintings that depict the sublime act of thinking itself. Contrary to My Back to the World in terms of point of view?
Untitled #5, 1998
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Blessings, 2000
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Gratitude, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
Occasional emerge of central horizon.
Untitled #12, 2002
Acrylic and graphite and canvas
The Sea, 2003
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Untitled, 2004
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Easier late works as a return to the looser beginnings.
Untitled #4, 2002
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Homage to Life, 2003
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas
A new shape. A final shape.
In fifty years of painting (save a few years off), one can see a progression of spatial inquiry through pencil and brush which returns to a dark shape in the midst of a mid-tone field. See the earlier Mid-Winter, 1954 (below) in contrast with Homage to Life, 2003 (directly above). The later works return to a fluid state, though refined in terms of geometry rather than free-form organic shapes. Not quite aligned to the frame of the whole in either canvas, the more recent suggests a closer instance of form following form with slight (non-fussy) deviations.
There is something nice about eyeballing artwork as a maker and a viewer rather than expecting everything to measure up, so to speak, mathematically, geometrically, logically. Approximation and tension along such edges reasserts a human (humanist) quality.
Oblique references somewhere between hand made/hewn (fabric and grain. Denim, wool, wood) and some remote ideal. Sticks and stones connect as pencils and crushed pigments are delineated. What divides and what holds things together? Negative space. That which IS abstract. Radiating from center. Sun (energy) and eye (receptor). Interaction between the two=mental processes. i.e.. mind.
A lifelong process of inquiry about space and thinking. Defining space and what can be done to understand it according to line, shape, and soft color. So, an emphasis on the structure, the rhythm, the pattern. Color is the floating, amorphous space, the edges of canvases, like an eyeball floating in a fluid, medium, a dynamic state of being aware of everything between center and edge, seeking a quieter, static condition without defaulting to absolute nothing. Malevich (backed into a corner). Not death but life ad infinitum!
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