Sep 26, 2019 - Written by Barbara Martin

BETWEEN THE LINES: BARBARA MARTIN SOLO EXHIBITION

 These paintings began as a simple game-like exercise using charts. Ultimately and unexpectedly, the game took on a life of its own and became an ongoing fascination. 

Gestural mark making without thinking: Quick! Don't think! Just make a new mark! Any mark will do!  

I use this exercise with my students to help them loosen up and also to recognize their own individuality as mark makers. This is a great warm up for the overthinker like me. There is no do-over because you can't do this wrong. Your marks are your marks. 

But eventually, I began to wonder, what do the marks mean? What is making me make these particular marks? And so I began to explore my process. At first I made charts, which lead to larger marks, which lead to paintings.

As an artist, I struggle with doubting my work. I do not always trust my marks. This is a form of overthinking. I have come to believe that for me, ritual can be a direct aid to focus, that consciously standing tall and taking a deep breath can serve as an aid to calming my overly busy mind, that a relaxed clearing of the mind can serve as a route to channeling intuitive creativity via gestural mark making. The trick is getting myself to that mental/physical space.

To faciliate the process, out of curiosity, I began painting the charts row by row. I used ordinary acrylic paint and a random brush.  I would do a few boxes as a warm up, a near daily practice, a curiosity.  As a practice in clearing the mind, in finding focus, in making pure marks. Some have a word as prompt, some are just ... marks. Do you see any patterns in them? Where did the words come from? I made them up, pulled them out of thin air. I wrote a row of words, then quickly painted them without stopping to think. Load the brush, read the word, paint it immediately, load the brush again and move on to the next. So simple.

Next I made the larger series of marks using the same paper and paint but a much larger brush. (18x24" un-named but numbered) Six were done in sequence laid out on a table top and the rest on the floor. (I am short, the paint is drippy, the largest paper measures 48x60".) The elevation at Brush Creek Ranch is well over 7000 feet, high enough to induce altitude sickness is some people. Each time I bent over to make a mark I felt dizzy. This kept me moving quickly.

Another day, without thought or prompt, I painted the four named pieces consisting primarily of painted marks (two with scratches of charcoal). The result: a narrative of sorts, mouse vs snake, we know how the story goes. I saw it immediately once the pieces were done. How is that even possible?

Next the line of ten smaller titled pieces, done almost exactly a year later at Jentel Foundation for the Arts where I held a month long residency (with additional assistance from the Oregon Arts Commission). Although now using sumi ink from Japan, I stuck with an ordinary paint brush. These pieces were done on a table top, blank sheets aligned in a row. As an experiment, I penciled a non-repeating grid on each paper, but the grid lines are turned randomly this way and that. I wanted to see if the grid would influence how the marks landed on the page. What do you think? 

 These are titled. The marks appear very deliberate. But I did not have a title in mind in advance! I made each mark quickly, loading the brush and making the mark. This time, as I made each mark the title came to me, immediately and clearly. This deep knowing sense felt like a perfect melding of concept/word/mark

I feel these marks are more precise and perhaps more mature than the marks of a year ago, as though I have begun to internalize the process to the extent I no longer need a prompt but can pull (or receive) both concept and line together at once with an exciting level of specificity. Making this most recent set felt like being in a self induced hypnotic state. Perhaps practice does pay off?

Much of my painting practice involves mark making with tools or with my bare hands. The Mechanical series shown here was driven by pure mark making. I was inspired by the commanding landscape, the open sky and open spaces of Wyoming. Driving along the interstate from Portland to southeast Wyoming I was awed by the concentrated forces we humans exert upon the planet surface: mining, drilling, extracting, excavating, irrigating, harvesting all on a huge industrial scale. These activities by nature require brute strength and power  engineered with heavy equipment. The scenes made me feel humans are very small and inconsequential compared to the earth's crust, but the breathtakingly vast expanses of the landscape itself already make me feel insignificant. So in channeling what I had seen and sensed, my marks in this series are alternately strong and ghostly. The beautiful yet limited palette reflects the dryness of late summer in an already dry region. 

Working in sequence, step by step, jumping from one piece to the next facilitates my process in several ways. Make a mark and move on helps me avoid overthinking or overworking the pieces. The speed prevents me from fully obliterating prior layers, thus allowing the visual depth to build. Acrylic paint dries quickly which means by the time I have moved down the line of paintings, the first one is dry enough to work on again. Working on a series, I am able to make the same successful move on all of them, and conversely I am able to trial solutions to an unsuccessful move through multiple attempts. Ultimately, I am able to fine tune the paintings both as individual pieces and as a group as though working a large scale puzzle. This satisfies my analytical tendencies. 

If you look very closely, you may be able to see how each of the Mechanical paintings began as emerald green linework on the white gessoed paper -- Emerald City would have been the sixth piece in the series but I skipped it because I ran out of wall. 

 Read more about the exhibit