Martha LaMarche

The timeless visual communication of the arts fascinates Maine artist Martha LaMarche. “I lose myself in the brushstrokes, color, composition and the awakening of the elusive flow.” Her primary creative springboard is nature, but current events and the inner turmoils they spark also invite creative exploration. In Martha’s work, larger surfaces often promote movement and spontaneity and pair well with oil colors, mediums and cold wax. Her passion for subjects reveals itself in organic movements with a variety of instruments, resulting in mark-making techniques that create statements open to interpretation and introspection by viewers. She works with fastidious care, building layer by layer, to create a sophisticated, evolving surface patina, sometimes as smooth as silk, yet with depth; other times rough and thick with paint. The piece is only resolved when it “speaks” to her. When creating a series of works about a particular subject, Martha prefers to avoid working in a linear fashion. Instead, she finds that moving freely from one subject to the next creates greater opportunities for creative expression. With that pursuit, she can explore different subjects, and at times different styles that organically evolve to produce a number of complex interrelated themes. She calls it “the coalescence.”