above: The dining room becomes an intimate cove beside the grandeur of the entry’s stairway. Yet it gathers its own gravitas from the limestone-tiled wall that flows from the entry. The homeowner’s equestrian passion is seen in a bronze equine sculpture set between Holly Hunt’s bronze “Bell Pepper” lamps. Women on Beach by artist America Martin provides an artistic focal point

We look back at excerpts from our conversations that highlight Martin’s studio practice, process, and the continuing inspiration for her most recent body of work.

It’s these sort of everyday Genre scenes that make up most of Martin’s oeuvre and justify her self-given title of “painting anthropologist,” but she has a way of romanticizing the quotidian in a way that make these moments feel monumental. While men and still life images certainly find their fair share of the limelight in her work, many of her larger-than-life paintings feature another form found throughout art history – the nude female figure. “I’m doing what art has been doing forever,” Martin says with satisfaction, “though I’m able to have more real estate – when I say “real estate,” I mean, scope of joy and confidence in the way that I portray women – because I am a woman.”

JA: Do your paintings have autobiographical elements to the narrative? Is this a reason for reoccurring themes throughout your body of work?

MARTIN: Everything is autobiographical. We are living biographies. Artists are just outside the lines about it. There are reoccurring themes, images and subject matters that I return to. These repeating images are at this point still partially responsible for the pleasure, comfort and joy I find when making a new work. For example, say when I clean the house as a rule I listen to very loud Beethoven or Billy Joel. When I paint a women resting in nature I put a small snail or a bird near her, because these are the things that draw my attention and make a moment tender. These themes repeat themselves and tend to go on with a series, until I begin finding interest in a new notion.

“J. Willott Gallery hosted an extremely successful and well-attended America Martin exhibition Nov. 24. A Colombian-American fine artist based in Los Angeles, Martin has expanded her well known painting and sculpture works to include new surprises in 3-dimensional art. As basis for her enigmatic works, America sites universal truth as inspiration for creating derivations in indigenous subject matter via the human form.

Mark Williams and Niki Papadopoulos of Mark Williams Design Associates transformed the entryway and main floor into a sophisticated space filled with spectacular, oversized art, like brilliant paintings by America Martin.

A trip to AMERICA MARTIN’s expansive live/work space reveals a prolific young artist’s flourishing body of work.

“In life we are given a blank canvas of our own. The markings, the strokes, the hues vary depending on each of us. Our truth that lives idly within is freed when we give it a place to find liberation.”

America Martin’s new show explores the themes and subjects dear to the artist’s heart including reclining female nudes and musicians at work.

America Martin lives and breathes art. Painter, sculptor, photographer, printmaker and accomplished writer, when she is not making art, she reads about it and — with infectious joy-talks about it. It all started with a discarded book about Vincent Van Gogh, tossed among the wire hangers and outgrown roller skates at a neighborhood garage sale. With only a quarter to spend the teen settled on the book and fell in love.

Not only does this endearing and talented woman paint, she also creates intricate sculptors as well.

MUSEUM.org Interview with AMERICA MARTIN

If you live in this town, you've probably heard about the rising-star artist America Martin.