Eugene J. Martin

Eugene J. Martin was an African American visual artist. While his art was "beyond category", he is particularly noted for his complex, often whimsical and biomorphic mixed media collages on paper; pencil, pen and ink drawings; and "pure", lyrical and constructed abstractions on canvas.

Sourced

• If you seek just a little truth, as most, you should not ignore abstract forms, the basis from which all short-lived experiences we call reality springs.

• • Direct Art Magazine, "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin", Fall-Winter 2006, Vol. 13, p. 87; also http://www.artnet.com/awc/eugene-j-martin.html and http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html

• While traveling our separated roads through life, we are also either road signs or potholes on the roads of others.
  • Cellar Door, Spring 1985, Vol. 12(2), p. 50.

• The bird of truth would not be able to fly if it weren't for the air of lies we breathe.
  • from E.J. Martin's website at http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html

• Can someone eat the fruit that comes from the tree of action that grows from the seeds of your mind?
  • from E.J. Martin's website at http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html and http://www.neoimages.net/statement.aspx?id=1312

• There are opposing forces in all living things. My work reflects this and stirs up a contrast of emotions in the viewer... perception versus annoyance. To the viewer who has reached that level of awareness, my work is no longer abstract, but very real.
  • Direct Art Magazine, "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin", Fall-Winter 2006,Vol. 13, p. 86, http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.php?id=791 and http://afonline.artistsspace.org/view_artist.php?aid=3883

Quotes about Eugene J. Martin

• Lorsque l'art d'écrire obsède mon esprit et ronge insidieusement mes forces, je laisse errer mon regard sur un dessein d"Eugene Martin, je me repaîs de ses couleurs sereines et puise des certitudes dans ses lumières si denses.
  • Françoise Mallet-Joris, foreword in catalogue booklet of Eugene Martin's 1990 one-person exhibit at the Michel Rooryck Gallery, Ghent, Belgium

• As have the Chinese and English Languages, Eugene has stripped his grammer to the naked bone, sinewed the simple frame, and created a rich vocabulary of meaning, sight and emotion. Yet, always there is discipline.
  • Thomas Stark, from E.J. Martin's website at http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html, and http://www.the-artists.org/artistsblog/posts/st_content_001.cfm?id=926

• One element that seems to run throughout Martin's forty years of work is the physical and psychological mechanics of the body/mind. Whether spirited in animals or manifested through abstraction, they are about ourselves: our neurosis, the dreams we hope for, how we eat... Ultimately though, they reveal our resistance to escape the gravitational pull of stillness - the inevitable conclusion to life.
  • Brian Guidry, in pamphlet introducing Eugene James Martin's "Ornithology" exhibit, Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette LA, 1.25.2005 - 4.10.2005