George Lawson Gallery: Donald Martiny Selected Paintings

George Lawson Gallery: Donald Martiny Selected Paintings
Donald Martliny Selected paintings George Lawson Gallery LA

Monday, May 2, 2011

statement

The focus of my inquiry as a painter is the gesture.

Many of the abstract expressionists of the 1950s, the second generation abstractionists in particular,adopted an attitude of an all over attack, attempting to fill the canvas with energy.
They made big expansive gestures on the canvas but then ran into problems, particularly in the corners.  In painting and energy terms, they were compromised by the "fixing-up" of all the loose gestures-as their gestural arcs were limited by the boundaries of the rectangular suport or ground upon which they played out.

Later, artists like Frank Stella, Sam Gilliam, Elizabeth Murray and Ellsworth Kelly addressed this issue each in their own way; generally by shaping the canvas to fit their painting.

Though I am inspired and intrigued by these ideas, my interest lies in freeing the gesture from the traditional rectangular shaped support and exploring its potential.  Rather than having a painting full of gestures, the painting itself becomes the gesture.

My process is to start out small, developing prototypes and studies.  I then translate the most
successful pieces into full sized works.  It is my belief that the larger scale invites the viewer inside the work.

I create the works on the floor, moving around them.  I often use brooms for brushes.  The paint is a mixture of polyepoxide, polyamine and raw pigment.  Sometimes I add micro bubbles to make them lighter.  As a veteran oil painter, I enjoy the idea that in this exploration I am using materials employing nanotechnology and brooms.