Suzette Marie Martin is a figurative painter based in New England.
She uses archetypal figures, the narrative potential of body language, and science-based data to explore the existential trauma of ecological collapse.
She uses archetypal figures, the narrative potential of body language, and science-based data to explore the existential trauma of ecological collapse.
Partially legible diagrams, symbols and snippets of technical text engulf figures with complex, confusing and incomplete information. Mythological nature deities, proxies for the endangered ecosystems they traditionally embodied, struggle in Anthropocene landscapes 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, immersed within damning excerpts from climate and environmental research, face banishment from Paradise.
Her work acknowledges the science behind, and psychological consequences of, compounding ecological crises in the 21st Century, through eco-feminist and humanist perspectives.
Martin's practice, rooted in drawing and developed in series, is informed by observational studies, art historical reference and topical research.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, text and abstraction.