Thursday, June 2, 2011

Agnes Martin: Vitreous painting on glass




Agnes Martin, Vitreous painting on glass, 8 x10”


Agnes Martin is an artist I became aware of at the last residency within a group critique session with Adam Benard. I very much appreciate the instinct of learning about her paintings and writings. The reference was brought forward in reference to my intuitive paintings which are predominantly white after Pousette-Dart. I had an opportunity to view a few pieces by Agnes Martin at MOMA in March. Oddly enough the camera would not register to photograph these images. They were too light in color. This also is a problem I have with my intuitive paintings of similar technique explored this semester.
On another note, besides this material on Martin I am seeing a disintegration of the quality of this scanner I have been using for my vitreous paintings on glass. There is always a stripy mark within the image. The scanner is nine years old, so I suppose it has endured a good life. The camera I presently have also is not that wonderful… so I need to invest in better equipment all the way around. I am anxious to get the vitreous paintings on glass photographed as final wall pieces. At the present time, I have been scanning them when the artwork for them is completed. I have been preparing the pieces at the end of each semester for presentation at residency for time efficiency.
I am just showing my vitreous paintings on glass for the first time in a professional exhibit. These pieces intended as wall pieces are dependent on ambient light, and had much discussion about this during my residency critiques. My mentor last semester reminded me that a gallery would know how to aim the track lighting to illuminate these correctly. The three pieces presently on exhibit at the Sawtooth Gallery look great! So I am anxious of getting new photographs of all of these as truly completed pieces replacing all the scanned images in my albums.

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Biography-
Agnes Martin was born on March 22, 1912 in Macklin, Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up in Vancouver British Columbia. Martin moved to the United States in 1932 and became a citizen in 1940. She studied at Columbia University from 1941-1942 and again from 1951-1952. Martin moved to New Mexico where she studied at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, 1946 – 1947, and also taught painting from 1947 – 1948. Returning to New York in 1957, Martin settled in lower Manhattan where she met fellow artists Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, Robert Indiana, and James Rosenquist.Martin had her first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1958. Her work consisted of paintings on a rational grid system, influenced by the development of Minimalism. Martin's oeuvre often created a sense of delicacy, with the color floating off the canvas and a network of carefully penciled lines. Although classified as a Minimalist artist due to her emphasis on line, grids and field of extremely subtle color, Martin considered herself an Abstract Expressionist.Surveys of Martin's work have been exhibited at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Menil Collection, Houston.Agnes Martin died December 16, 2004 in Taos, New Mexico.


For more information on Agnes Martin, visit: http://clara.nmwa.org/index.php?g=entity_detail&entity_id=5527


To view my formative archive of my Uomini Famosi. Vitreous paintings on glass, visit: https://picasaweb.google.com/113967877601706753492/UominiFamosi_VitreousPaintingsonGlass

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