America Martin’s 2024 show “Outdoors Until Dusk” at the Carver Hill Gallery will open on Aug. 2nd to Sept. 2nd, 2024
After a brief hiatus from painting to spend time with her husband and new baby, America Martin’s much anticipated 2024 show “Outdoors Until Dusk” at Carver Hill Gallery's pop-up location in Rockland will open for the First Friday Art Walk on August 2, from 5-7 pm. Refreshments will be served and America will be happy to meet attendees and answer questions.
"Outdoors 'til Dusk" is a reflection of time spent in Maine with family and friends. The show will feature 12 brand new oil paintings, 16 framed works on paper, and 4 sculptures.
As always, America's line work is assertive and energetic - fiercely strong and confident - but the dripping, intentional crazing and coarser lines have given way to clean lines and solid, geometric color blocks without much blending or shading. Her dark linework is further emphasized by outlines and shadow lines (that are etched with even more lines) creating linear “spaces” that make up the human forms. No matter how you turn the paintings they are interesting compositions and abstractions that often resemble stained glass windows.
According to America:
This current show feels perhaps a bit more narrative than past exhibitions - sea sirens, beaches, mermaid’s stories told by creatures - happy yellows and dogs in canoes. The hues remind me of when you stay out of doors ‘til the dusk and bugs drive you in.
America first came to Maine to exhibit with Carver Hill Gallery twelve years ago. "Soon after, I ended up spending a few weeks on North Haven Island painting in the former studio of the late American Impressionist painter Frank Benson. This beautiful estate was a place where dreams were pulled down from the ether and turned into things that can be seen, touched and shared. On the walls were the wiped colors of Benson’s brush and the large glass windows let the light flood the barn in yellow glory. Standing in this Benson barn having long known his work, I felt that I now knew him as an artist. Why he wanted to be here was apparent; time and space on this island was tangibly different from other places I had been. Mornings come fast in Maine - the colors break, and lose their mistiness, and you discover yellow ocher, viridian, zinc white and Prussian blue. I like getting down to the water before the lobstermen to ask questions and learn things about why they do what they do, etc. They ask me questions like why I ask so many questions. As fate would have it, I married a man from Maine who was living out West. Now we end up visiting for longer periods of time and I have come to understand and love this place in a more personal and romantic way."
OUTDOORS UNTIL DUSK runs through September 2, 2024
THE YELLOW WAREHOUSE
Carver Hill Gallery Pop-Up Space
20 Winter Street
Rockland, Maine 04841
(207)975-6563 Gallery
(207)542-9895 Cell
These pieces are happy thoughts, stories I have remembered and made up, bits of sunshine and salt and sea that I put on canvas. They express the quiet joy of things that make me think of Maine.
THE COURIER~GAZETTE
Carver Hill Gallery will host an artist talk with America Martin at her solo show at The Yellow Barn Pop-Up location (20 Winter Street Rockland, across from CMCA) on Saturday, Aug. 24th at 1:00.
America’s Colombian heritage is obvious and alive in her work. Roberta Carasso, Ph.D (noted art writer and National lecturer on Pablo Picasso's Legacy for the 21st Century) says of America Martin, “Within her visual narratives are ties to an indigenous art originally formed from blending Hispanic, European, and African cultures. In particular, her lively scenarios are created with bold lines, striking combinations of color, and compositions that are generous in size and emotion. Martin’s people are larger than life, reminiscent of figures in murals of Latin heroes and heroines. Within her pulsating interplay of color, texture, line, and shapes, there is always Martin’s signature expression that identifies each work as America Martin.”