Cynthia Martin
“Goleta Bypass,” Acrylic and auto paint on panel, 12” x 36”
Cynthia Martin has lived in Santa Barbara since 1958. She received degrees in Painting, History, and Education from UCSB. She has had many solo exhibitions and group shows in the United States and in Europe and has received numerous awards.
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Artist Statement
For years I painted dramatic, cloudy skies from photos often taken from the deck of my south-facing home or from the passenger seat on road trips with my husband. During my career as an art educator, I taught painting and color theory, and when I discovered narrow canvasses in a local art store, I got the idea of adding sidebars of deconstructed color to my large oil paintings. I then had these sidebars finished with an automobile clear coat to symbolize the fact that, as commuters, we often see the landscape second-hand.
THE PASSING LANDSCAPE
The California landscape has always played a role in my life and in my art. The themes of my work stem from personal angst about the vanishing natural world, and I am interested in how we see the familiar scenery around us. My recent abstract landscape series contains glittering stripes of deconstructed colors that refer to pathways, roads, contrails, channels, and other evidence of a growing population constantly on the go. Many of the pieces have the hi-tech finish of auto paint, symbolizing America’s love of the automobile—after all, that is how many of us saw the American landscape on childhood family trips! Even if much of that landscape has changed, I am focused emphasizing its beauty, and I hope we can preserve what is left.
VANISHING LANDSCAPE SERIES
In recent decades, California real estate has been divided up into freeways, tract homes, and flight patterns, and the beauty of the original landscape is often lost. I often use the concept of the “grid,” and in this series I have lifted landscape parts and mounted them on a black background for emphasis. The edges of the tiny canvas fragments are covered with gold leaf to emphasize their preciousness.
HARD SELL SERIES
With my concern for the environment and a belief in the power of language in mind, I have juxtaposed ad slogans from TV screens, magazines, and the internet on various elements of landscape. My large canvasses of ominous clouds can be read as smoke from wildfires or intense air pollution, making a timely reference to climate change and the state of the present political discourse and that everything in America is for sale, even our precious resources and the land itself.
Oil, Acrylic, Auto Paint on Canvas
36 x 48 inches
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