ABOUT THE ARTIST
Biography
Martell received an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Washington, Seattle. It was the beginning of a long and ongoing career in Washington State. She has been Artist-in-Residence at Pilchuck Glass Center, Western Washington University, and the Centrum Foundation. Awards include a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Florence Biennale in Italy; a Purchase Award from Pratt Graphic Art Center, New York; First Prize at the Seattle Women’s Film Festival, for Elle, an animated color Xerox film; and a nomination for a Seattle Neddy Artist Fellowship. Her prints were included in the exhibition “West Coast,” curated by the Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco, circulated by the Smithsonian Institution; and “Seven Washington Printmakers,” organized by Western Washington University, which toured in the U.S. and Japan.
Currently her work can be seen at the Seattle/Tacoma International Airport and in the collections of the Kobe Art Museum in Japan, Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York, and Nordstrom stores across the United States. Washington State collections include Microsoft, Gonzaga University, the Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, and private collections.
Solo exhibitions include the Jundt Art Museum at Gonzaga University, a retrospective at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, and numerous shows at Grover/Thurston Gallery, Lorinda Knight Gallery, and Museo Gallery. She has participated in many group shows, among them Prographica/KDR Gallery, Port Angeles Fine Art Center, the Whatcom Museum, the Bellevue Arts Museum, and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.
Martell has worked as a Curator at the Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Culture) in Spokane; as a staff member at and/or, an alternative art space in Seattle; as picture editor and designer for Photography Northwest; and as a trustee on the board of Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle.
Martell lives and works on Whidbey Island and maintains a studio annex in Seattle.
MORE FROM THE ARTIST
INTERVIEWS
Interview with Maxine Martell at MUSEO
I am so fascinated by the, are they photographs or postcards? In your pieces, especially the 4 season coats – I can’t stop looking at them. Are they from real photographs or postcards, and are they all people and; places you know? The sense of connection with place and time, because of those elements in your pieces, is so interesting. Where were you when you painted those four coats – both physically, and in the world around you?
All our minds are filled with photographs and postcards and they are pretty universal—birthdays, holidays, travels, families, sweethearts, friends. All I had to do was think for a minute and from behind my eyes up would pop snapshots from the season. They were ephemeral but became real as I painted them.
The coats were painted here on the island. My studio is in a field where I am close to the natural world, to vetch and rosehip and puddles with skins of ice. To be in my studio is to be in a place but also to be in my mind and body.
What was the genesis of the coats? Did you plan on doing four or did they come one by one? Did you sketch and paints all four in sequence?
A photographer friend had access to a collection of vintage fashion. One of the garments he photographed captured me. It’s lace was too intricate to replicate in a drawing so I created a pattern of my own. That led to drawing a second garment with different lace. Then the idea of the seasons and their flora arrived along with the memory of an Italian wedding I once attended.
A series often begins with an individual painting which suggests variations. Once begun I work on several paintings at a time. They call back and forth to one another until I abandon them.
What are you interested in these days? Any book recommendations or music or interesting things you have been reading about?
I’m currently reading “The Living Mountain” by Nan Shepherd about walking in the Cairngorms mountains in Scotland. Beautiful prose. Also, the latest Thomas McGuane story, “Take Half, Leave Half” in the New Yorker (Oct. 10, 2022). So good.
I mostly listen to Jazz. I like the improvisational aspects of it.
On Instagram I love to see and hear the instruments and musicians that find release and joy in sound.
Today, I’m planting some Iris bulbs as a promise to spring.