Jean-Marie Martin

My academic education was between the years 1973-1987 beginning with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Laval University (Quebec), a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) and course work for a Doctor of Art from New York University ( no dissertation ). My paintings during this period were derivative of the major currents of the time; minimalism, conceptual, performance and video art.

Between 1987 and 2010 I explored the concept of landscape painting guided by the appropriation of objects or words that were evocative. For example, instead of painting the ocean I would use a blue matrix in which I added areal aquarium with fish on to the canvas. I was also incorporating sentences with social and environmental questioning concerning toxic products like asbestos canvas and lead paint. In other words, I was striving to build a visual landscape and not just referencing it.

I gradually left this conceptually graphic approach to landscape and environmental issues to return to my initial inspiration which included structural and repetitive motifs. I always try to maintain a critical discourse during that period about the emptiness of our world. I worked on classically, abstract painting on which I would add receptive banal word using animated neon lights such as a commercial street sign would, hoping to express or illustrate two different ideas, one about abstract painting and the other about banality of daily life.

For the last six years, I have been returning to a reductive painting ( in the sense that I only use a minimum of elements: canvas, paint, stretchers, frame ). This current approach to my art involves a balance between gestural paint and a formal, geometric constructed background. A balance that involves the tension between – square painting divided into four sections held together by an aluminum or wood frame – and a repetitive gestural motif made by hand using a limited choice of colors, blue, black, grey and some metallic accents. The ad on stretchers and openings create a window that reveal the painting construction and make the painting more than just a two dimensional plane surface to become a tridimensional object painting.

My new paintings (deconstruction paintings, homage paintings, objects paintings) are not only pretending to engage the viewers into a visual experience but take them into an evocative transcending space. In my eyes abstract painting is still totally open to new discovery and immense new possibilities.