What You See, Unseen

Materiality
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lack of narrative or explanation, mathematical precision.
This work can be seen as manifesting purity
or perfection. Her work typifies the idea of internality
as it is brought forth from an inner source.
In Martin’s painting on linen from 1960, white
flower, the restrained, simple means project a
calm denial of the chaos of the world; a turning
toward the sacred, or ideal. In this painting there
is a sense of the artist subsumed by the practice
of art making. Martin did not seek subject matter
from external sources. Rather, for her, the work
was a meditation on perfection. Her approach was
constant and unwavering over the course of more
than thirty years. Derek Whitehead emphasizes
how works of art are able to transmit meaning
through form:
In human creativity the work of poiesis may be sensed as a kinetic gesturing: the
stroke of a brush, the shaping of a poem, the dexterous skill of a musician. Such
activities have a determined symmetry of parts and a distinct temper of being. Poetic
activity signals the emergence of a figure or rhythm — a transmissible figuration —
from the hand of the painter, poet, or musician. Genuine producing requires the
work of ‘the head’ and ‘the hands.’ Working with raw materials constitutes the kind
of producing which places itself in and through the created thing that is let be. 12
d
While the artist makes deliberate decisions to
utilize particular materials in a particular fashion,
there is an acknowledgement that an ineffable
quality of “letting be” must come through to the
viewer in works of art that we want to return to