Martin's work explores the possibility of making visual sense through a process that, though sometimes complex, turns out to be a kind of managed serendipity.

 

She creates large abstracts, working flat. She starts with acrylic paint, beginning with colors in different areas, and manipulates the canvas until she finds what works. The beginning is almost arbitrary, but what emerges is usually surprising.

 

Martin combines paint with a variety of textures—sometimes pouring medium, sometimes varnish, sometimes gels—to create surfaces that she will embellish, remove, scrape, splatter or puddle.

 

"Walking around the canvas as I work, I discover what perspective best suits the piece. Whether vertical, horizontal or angled, there is a struggle between disarray and harmony, comfort and discomfort that I strive to resolve in each piece, a process that can sometimes be completed through a minute detail or a disparate dash of color."

 

"I hope to keep the viewer simultaneously engaged by the complexities within the work and soothed by the empty spaces between."