Chris Martin
b. 1954, United States
Chris Martin (b. 1954, Washington, D.C.) is an American artist known for his vibrant, colorful paintings, which merge encyclopedic figuration with painterly abstraction.
His paintings have been critically acclaimed for their immediacy and aesthetic diversity, fusing autobiographical elements with a wide-ranging visual lexicon equally grounded in playful pop cultural referents and twentieth-century art history. Martin’s focus on deep, layered colour fields, abstract forms and gestural brushstrokes can be seen as emerging out of the legacy of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, yet his radical use of non-traditional materials, such as craft glitter, collage and figuration is distinctly individualistic. Thematically, his paintings reflect the cycles of his wide range of personal interests, from astrology and rock music to Eastern religions, postwar European painting and philosophical texts.
Martin's work is currently held in permanent collections including The High Museum, Atlanta, GA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; and The Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC.