(1912-)
Martin was born in Canada but came to the United States in 1932. He attend Columbia University and studied art. Upon completion he moved to the Southwest. After producing a body of lyrical abstractions relating to the New Mexico desert in the late 1940s, Martin moved back to New York in the early 1950s. There, she reduced her pictorial vocabulary in order to express intuitions of a rhythmic universe in an almost musical sequence of recessive, often white forms. Her work since the mid-i 950s has increasingly reflected her experience of light and color in the New Mexico desert, to which she returned in 1967.
MARTIN'S THOUGHTS ON ART
"It is all awareness of reality.
In a Chinese vase we can see all that the artist rejected in order to have as close an approximation as possible to his response to reality. We can feel as he felt looking at his work. The same response is made continually over a thousand years. Proving its reality. That is what are is about.""There is no such thing as "contemporary art. Any material may be used but the theme is the same and response is the same for all art work."
"I want to emphasize the fact that we all have the same experience and the same consern but the artist must know exactly what the experience is. He must pursue the truth relentlessly. Once he sees this fact his feet are on the path. If you want to know the truth you will know it."
"The manifestation of materials in are work is a result of this state of mind. The artist works by awareness of his own state of mind."