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Though she’s always been a gifted painter, Julia Martin has evolved over the last few years into one of Nashville’s most intriguing and fully formed artists. Her earlier work was more figurative—she spent years as a commissioned portrait painter—but over time she’s moved toward abstract figuration: She still focuses on the human form, yet her newer subjects inhabit a dreamlike world that, though seemingly rooted in the past, defies easy interpretation. (“I do feel a need,” Martin says in her artist statement, “for the work to evoke a feeling similar to the one I get when looking at a dingy old photograph or a film that forces my imagination back in time.”) These environments aren’t the only elusive elements—rendered in earthy, muted colors, her stone-faced subjects never tip their hands, an ambiguity that only makes them more alluring, like that frustrating lover you just can’t get a handle on.
Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: Sept. 12. Continues through Oct. 10, 2009
Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: Sept. 12. Continues through Oct. 10, 2009
