Artist's Statement

These paintings derive from diverse landscape environments and from the complex narratives that are part of their fabric both on the surface and at depth. Any landscape contains remnants of earlier landscapes and the processes, both natural evolutionary and human, that underlie them and have in part constructed them. Consequently, landscapes appear like a document with a past history recorded on and within it. Some of the script is obscured and parts of the record may be missing. In some instances contemporary text resides side by side with eons old calligraphy. This sense of continuous removal and remaking is fundamental to the processes that have shaped and continue to shape the earth.

Form and colour are manipulated in the paintings in order to translate these processes into a representational image. The task is to find equivalents in painting for an experience that is sensory, perceptual and conceptual. Paint is applied, removed and reapplied. Fragments of old material remains beside and beneath more recent layers. Geological and architectural contexts, for example, quarries and parts of cities of various ages, are the source for the vocabulary of shapes and marks in the work.

The activity of painting, (laying down and removing material, the accumulation of "evidence" of the work being done), and the intrinsic nature of the discipline, (apparently static images made over time, the variety of surfaces available), offer me an opportunity to  investigate the processes which make and have made what I see in the world.

Paintings are oil on canvas.

Price Range
Prices for Martin's work range is still to be determined.