The Art of Fred Martin
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A selection of paintings, May 2004.
All paintings are acrylic on paper, 44 x 30  inches
Scroll down for the paintings, click the image for a larger view.
#1, May was begun with the following text...

"I have nothing to contribute to your history of art,
no mark to make in your theory and criticism.
I have nothing to show and nothing to tell
but to myself the images of my life as they come to me.

"And this morning on waking,
a Byzantine bowl, golden with the ground of eternity and tomorrow, marked scattered with signs and symbols of all I have known or will, and drifting over it the light and shadow flickering
of afternoon passing to sunset."

And when I developed the image,
what I got was not the golden bowl of Byzantium
but a chalice of blood overflowing with shadow.


#1, May 2004

 


#2, May 2004.
(Another try at the golden bowl.)

 


#3, May 2004.
Begun as the dark mirror...
"Do not believe your story in the dark mirror, everyone sees another one."

#4, May 2004.
Addressed to all famous people everywhere...
"That my grave is already closing and near lost
need not concern me... yours too."
And yet there is undying flesh and blood between "me" and "yours,"
and I could not resist filling the whole right side with what I heard as "They're souls rising in the light."

 


#5, May 2004.
From the tiny Winsor Newton watercolor sketch box
given to me by Jean Martin in the early 1950's