The Art of Fred Martin
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About my work, 1959
Unless otherwise noted, all paintings are distemper and watercolor on paper, 9 x 12 inches.
 

 


Scroll down for the paintings, click thumbnails for a larger view.

From Square, Circle, Pyramid, 1959


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  From Celtic Gems


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  From Roman Drawings
 
 

I had been in a bookstore which carried pages of pictures torn and colored from old books, mostly late 17th and early 18th century dictionaries of fruit and flowers, and I got the idea for a kind of museum handbook of specimens such as Roman coins which would stand for a permanence, an everness in the material world.  The idea that these coins would be Roman came from Walter Pater’s description in his Marius the Epicurean of the “religion of Numa”—some ancient near forgotten deep religion of nature and the fertility of the land.

And then I retuned to my original old paper,
the heavy weight newsprint of most
of the dying city drawings,
a paper that aged and yellowed
as I painted on it
and has aged deeper
and deeper in
the forty years since.

 

 


 

 

  From the Roman Drawings, 1959

 

 


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