"My paintings are like portals into worlds familiar and strange; mysterious, intriguing and sublime. Poetic and metaphorical, my work reveals the visual truth of perception, capturing not only the quality of light or the tonal harmonies of a particular scene, but also its mood and the wonder of vision itself."
— Douglas Martenson
Wild Flowers, 22" x 15", Watercolor On Buff
With my recent work I have returned to some familiar and meaningful locations. I've been taking a closer look at the variety of plant life inhabiting the summer fields of Maine and returning to the rocks along the shore; a location that has endured endless tides and storms, yet continues to hold strong... sometimes moving or changing, but always remaining.
I have felt this way myself recently, especially with all of the turmoil of this past year, and this exploration is a way for me to process and question our time.
When I am in the studio, I think about how the fields or an impending storm might spark a dialogue about the impermanence or resilient nature of things. I ponder how and where the clouds, rocks and tents as metaphor will then take this conversation.
All together, my work evokes a much larger idea, that being the nature of our existence. And above all, the Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine topography serve as the most important foil, allowing me to highlight and express these concerns.
Apple Branch, 15" x 22", Watercolor On Buff Paper
Boat, 22" x 15", Oil On Panel
Martenson has made his home in Philadelphia since 1978 and is a Graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His studio is a three story row house located in the Dickenson square area of Philadelphia and the house he rents in Maine is an old farm house located on seventeen acres facing Cadillac Mountain.
Martenson has been the recipient of many grants and awards including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, several Individual Creative Opportunity stipends from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Pew fellowship on the Arts grant for study at the Vermont studio center in northern Vermont, and a Cresson European Traveling Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academyof the Fine Arts. He has exhibited widely and shows his work regularly in NewYork, Philadelphia and Boston galleries.
Martenson has recently curated two exhibitions for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Landscapes Modern to Contemporary (2019) and The Artist’s Response to Nature:Tonalism, Historical to Contemporary (2016). Martenson was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and is a Professorof of Fine Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Long before recorded history, humans identified divinity in the natural world. Across the globe, cave paintings and petroglyphs represent the land, the animals and the supernatural. Prehistoric burial mounds and henges of Northern Europe align with equinoxes and solstices. At Newgrange in Ireland, decorated stone carvings record the phases of the moon and depict rays emerging over the horizon at sunrise. Contemporary viewers can only infer the exact meanings of these monumental relics, etched with waves, spirals and diamonds juxtaposed with recognizable imagery.
As contemporary innovation, architecture, technology and design increasingly position each person as the master of their own exclusive universe, the artists in Concerning The Spiritual In Landscape have humbly venerated the life-giving light, ever-present matter and perpetual cycles of nature that bring forth all things.
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to host a solo exhibition with gallery artist, Celia Reisman. This selection of new works features Reisman’s primary subject matter, the architectural landscape of the suburbs and rural scenes. As the exhibition title suggests, Reisman collects her imagery on the side streets and back roads near her seasonal residences in Philadelphia and Vermont.
As a dedicated formalist, Celia Reisman is a life-long student of both the historical and contemporary conventions of painting. Her works can be described as specific places of nameable objects, as well as a rectangle filled with abstracted arrangements of carefully orchestrated colors and shapes. Each aspect of the composition plays a role in directing movement across the scene as Reisman’s intuitive sense of relationships between manmade and natural forms build rich images that unfold full of surprises, humor, and mystery.
Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia represents noteworthy marine artists such as Douglas Martenson. “The coast of Maine is a natural wonder,” says Martenson. “The rocks along the shore are weather-beaten, wounded but enduring. I love the tides and where I go each summer, they vary by 9 feet. At high tide, only the sun-bleached caps of the boulders are visible. As the water recedes, the entire boulder appears, as if a large whale has emerged from the watery depths.
“The ocean is mesmerizing,” Martenson says, “and there is something that draws us to the shore; the waves crashing and the smell of the salt air. Collecting these paintings allows one to bring some of these sensations home.
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by gallery artist, Douglas Martenson and a group exhibition featuring the work of Brian Boutwell, Betsy Eby, Deirdre Murphy, Celia Reisman, Rebecca Segall, Sterling Shaw, Michayel Thurin, Alexandra Tyng, and Leigh Werrell, curated by Douglas Martenson.
Douglas Martenson paints observationally in various locations in Maine and Pennsylvania. He meticulously documents the light, atmosphere and environment of each view through a variety of painting techniques. While the painted objects appear with local color firmly established, a sensitive eye will begin to perceive deep reds, light purples, golds, chromatic grays and a spectrum of ever-present blues. Martenson’s careful handling of paint opens up worlds within each object, giving way to a conceptual interpretation over time.
