The Art of Fred Martin
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A selection of paintings...
The First Series of Large Acrylics, 1967-68.
All paintings are acrylic on canvas, approx 64 x87 inches unless otherwise noted.
Scroll down for the paintings, click the image for a larger view.

 


Pl. 17, "The Carpenter Series,"
 from Liber Studiorum, 1973.
Handcolored offset lithograph,
24 x 35 in.

In late 1966 through May of 67, I  made several hundred paintings on 24 x 36 inch oatmeal paper.  I called them "The Carpenter Series."  A few years later I made this Plate 17 of Liber Studiorum as a remembrance of them  Most of the Carpenter paintings have been destroyed or lost.  This print is their memory.  In June of 1967, I took perhaps fifty of the Carpenter paintings  to New York to show my dealer there who did not like them.  I had read on the plane to New York that the greatness of American painting lay in its vast size, and on my return to Oakland I determined to try vastness as the path to greatness. 

I re-organized my studio to paint the largest possible things—all about 66 x 84 inches—and on canvas and in acrylic (in themselves then the mark of greatness for painters in the way that bronze and marble once were for sculptors) rather than the paper and watercolor that had been my medium.  For imagery, I began with the "Carpenter" images I had been using. The paintings below are typical of the first group, of which there were thirteen all together.

The paintings are identified by number in the series "Large Acrylics," followed by the date of the painting, followed by the title.  The final number in the series was #105, July 1970.


1.
#1. July 1, 1967.
"Come."
approx. 66 x 66 in.

2.
#2, July 2. 1967.
"Well."
approx 72 x 66 in.

 


3.
#3. July 3, 1967.
"The Well in the Mountains."

4.
#5. August 6, 1967.
"Drinking Bird with Well."

 


5.
#6. August 7, 1967.
"Marriages are made in heaven."

6.
#8. August 8, 1967.
"Under the Blanket."

7.
#9. August 8, 1967.
"Egyptian Pyramid."

8.
#10.  August 12, 1967
"Arborvitae (Tree of Life)"

 


9.
#12.  August 18-19, 1967.
"In the Museum."
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here for the second series of
Large Acrylics 1967.


10.
#13.  August 20-23.
"The Tree in the Gut."