Nancy Martin

Artist Statement

Translated into gestural sensory marks, my practice presents interior monologues in a tactile exterior form. Through responding to my observation of fleeting moments, the mundane is emotively enlivened or preserved and instances recontextualized through the act of painting. Through this process, these moments of banality and cyclical elements of life are transposed into theatrical instances, creating a sense of otherness and an intrigue in the unknown.

Removed from their specific contexts, subjects are presented ambiguously - embodying a sense of familiarity and distance simultaneously to the viewer. The intensity or quietness of each brushstroke is formed in concert with the emotion felt whilst doing so and intended to be felt by the spectator. With this varied painterly vocabulary, the paintings collectively feature both tension and serenity. Heightened emotions and states of being are conveyed. The effects of light and shadow are key to my practice. I am intrigued by its ability to guide and obstruct perception through its generation of enigmatic forms. The rendering of light and its absence is often suggestive of something beyond the canvas, inaccessible or out of reach.

Exploring themes of intimacy and intrusiveness, my work encourages the viewer to question their position with and relation to the subjects within the paintings. Often the viewer is guided into an observational perspective, a reluctant voyeur peering into fragmented points of privacy and solitude. Subjects are presented averted, unaware of a spectator’s presence. Other works challenge this. Subjects are observed yet present themselves returning strong confrontational gazes to the viewer. Through this juxtaposition within my work, it is implied that the viewer is both the spectator and the subject themselves. My paintings appear to an extent impenetrable. The limited contextual information within the closely cropped compositions, in addition to the obstructive hazy layers of paint, prohibit the viewer from full access.

Weaved together, these figures and spaces appear slightly detached, ungraspable in a collective enigmatic atmosphere. The ambiguity sparking the viewers’ curiosity.