Suzette Marie Martin is a figurative painter based in New England.
Her current work centers on solastalgia, the existential distress caused by environmental decline. Martin uses archetypal figures, the narrative potential of body language, and science-based text to explore dichotomies between emotional response and rational evidence in the face of ecological collapse.
Her current work centers on solastalgia, the existential distress caused by environmental decline. Martin uses archetypal figures, the narrative potential of body language, and science-based text to explore dichotomies between emotional response and rational evidence in the face of ecological collapse.
Partially legible diagrams, symbols and snippets of technical text engulf figures and infuse Anthropocene landscapes with complex, confusing and incomplete information. Mythological nature deities, proxies for the collapsing ecosystems they traditionally embodied, struggle in ecosystems filled with the molecular notation of invisible toxins, or passively occupy the rivers of former indigenous lands in colonial New World maps. Masked figures, overwhelmed by the pandemic, are trapped within webs of medical jargon and viral diagrams. Allegorical first humans banished from paradise collapse in gestures of despair, surrounded by excerpts from climate and environmental research. This work acknowledges the science behind, and psychological consequences of, the compounding ecological crises in the 21st Century.
Martin's practice, rooted in drawing and developed in series, is informed by observational studies, art historical reference and topical research. Her combinations of wet and dry media create layers of gestural and textural marks, erasures, opaque passages and translucent washes that expose a working process of obscuring and revealing elements of figuration and abstraction.
Previous work explored dynamics of intimacy, vulnerability, estrangement and aggression within interpersonal relationships.