Paintings For A White Room

Images: 

Xanthos I, detail, oil on canvas, 44x72x2",2010

Richard Martinez, Paintings For A White Room

I think of my paintings as visual hybrids. They draw from diverse sources such as architecture, ornamentation, and reductive Modernist painting to name a few.This body of work continues my exploration of, and belief in, the qualities of paint, color, composition, and format as a vehicle for creating meaning in painting. The work employs pure sensuality of form, composition, and the tactile pleasure of manipulating materials and color as it's subject. Over the years, as I have moved through bodies of work, I've found myself coming back time and time again to the language of painting as the most direct way to allow the work to say what it says. Ultimately, I am interested in trying to make visual statements that are ambiguous, yet direct, and poetic in some way.