A spellbinding conversation with Donald Martiny

Cerma, 2020 (polymer and dispersed pigment on aluminum), 55x24 inches

Donald Martiny is an American Contemporary painter and fine artist, who is known for his use of color in his abstract paintings. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in art galleries and art spaces such as the Conny Dietzschold Gallery, the Cameron Art Museum, the Diehl Gallery, Market Art + Design Hamptons, and many more. His work is held in collections such as the Grahm Gund Family Foundation, One World Trade Center, the Newcomb Art Museum, and elsewhere. Martiny has lectured at Cornell University and at the Ackland Art Museum. His artwork has received press and been in publications internationally, most recently he has been featured in Architectural Digest. I had the pleasure and honor to ask Donald what has been his most challenging project as of yet, what drew him to making abstract art, and how he hopes people feel when they see his art.

UZOMAH: How do you approach the process of designing and creating artwork that you are asked to create?

DONALD: I keep a regular schedule in the studio working every day, seven days a week, from around 9:00 AM until 7:30 PM. I believe the best ideas and inspiration come from the work, the doing.

As I work I am in constant dialogue with the paintings and they tell me what to do. They ask questions, or present new opportunities and challenges. I am constantly pushing myself, my processes, my materials, and my abilities as an artist.                                                                                                                      

U: What has been the most challenging project you have worked on?

D: There have been many. One that is easy to talk about was when I was commissioned to make two monumental paintings to be permanently installed in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. The two paintings were to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the opening of the building. Because the paintings were too large to pass through any of the doors in the building, we decided to convert the lobby into a studio space where I would make the paintings on site.

Prior to that, no one had ever watched me paint. Painting requires a lot of focus and concentration. The lobby of One World Trade Center receives nearly twenty-five thousand visitors each day. That was a big challenge for me. Additionally, I only had a limited amount of time to create the paintings and allow them to dry enough to install… and nowhere to hide if anything went wrong. Thankfully, everything went beautifully, and I am very proud of the works.

U: How do you use abstract to display basic action and movement?

D: The gestures or brushstrokes in my works are made from my body moving through the paint.

I am not depicting images of movement, I am creating tracks or evidence of movement that actually happened. The marks are defined by the physicality of my body at the time. I think of the paint or color as pure sensation or feeling. I am pushing around feeling with my hands.

Moving is an expression just as the color is. It all comes together, drama, movement, light, color, time, dance, much like a film or an opera.

U: What are some things that made you want to be an artist that keep you going when days might provide you with reasons not to create?

D: I responded powerfully and viscerally to color at a very early age. Even though there was no art to speak of in our family home when I was growing up, and I didn’t have any concept of what an artist was, I knew I was interested in making things with color and form. I have always loved to draw. I first had my work exhibited in a professional art gallery when I was twelve years old.

U: What type of objects do you feel when creating and hope others might also see within your art?

D: I paint from the heart. That said, I try to make sure my work has a dialogue with the history of paintings. I look, read, study the history of painting religiously. Lately, I have been particularly interested in the Venetian school of painting: Titian, Giorgione, Tintoretto, and Veronese. They brought painting to life with their evident brushwork, their “colorito.”

U: What about art drew you to abstract?

D: I enjoy all kinds of art, both abstract, image-based art, objects, etc.

I make abstract art because I want to create experiences rather than illustrate narrative stories or present symbols to represent something other than what they are.

U: How do you hope other people will feel when they look at your art?

D: It is a joy when people respond to my work. A work is successful when I respond to it myself. I make works I would like to live with myself. When others respond to my work I feel we are sharing something. I think it is remarkable when someone from a faraway place, who comes from a very different culture, speaks a different language, shares an experience with me.

That is something very special and touching.

U:  How do you keep the motion and action found in life in your art?

D: Movement is life, stillness is the opposite. My work celebrates life. I have no straight lines in my art. Everything is moving.

U: Can you describe your most acknowledged stroke seen throughout your most prolific pieces?

D: I imagine my most known and seen works are the two paintings permanently displayed in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. They were installed to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the opening of the new building. It is truly an honor to have my work displayed in the lobby of one of the most iconic buildings in the world.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about my art practice with you. It was a pleasure.

Read the interview with Uzomah Ugwu at Arte Realizzata.

The brushstroke that makes eternal your art experience

“I prefer to create visceral experiences rather than intellectual explanations or narratives” D. Martiny

How many art exhibitions have you visited? I guess you have seen so many that you have lost count. However this time it’s different. Donald Martiny’s artworks have a kind of magical power: in each of them you can recognize a specific point in the author life. His paintings make eternal even the easiest life moments in an effort to celebrate every frame of the human existance. From the biggest events to the smallest ones. His creations are two-dimensional and three-dimensional: they are paintings and sculptures at the same time. In fact they emerge from the wall in which they are displayed. The artist was born in Schenectady (NY) in 1953 and currently works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His artworks are collected internationally and are shown widely. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him just some weeks before the opening of his last art exhibition in Venice (“PATHWAYS” – 10/09-10/10/2021 Scala Contarini del Bovolo San Marco). He has told us about his poetic and inspiration, his particular creative technique and last but not the least his relationship with some great art history masters.

Have a nice reading.

E.R. We can place your artworks between painting and sculpture. Your brushstrokes "frozen" your gestures in a particular moment of your life. Which intimate creative poetics underlies in your creations?

D.M. For me, movement is life; stillness indicates the absence of life. I want to celebrate life. My paintings are living events, movement, time, and my own physicality, captured in paint.

E.R. Your brushstrokes are self-supporting, without the need for a canvas. Why did you choose this particular effect?

D.M. I create objects from gestures. My works are a dialectical challenge; an inquiry into metaphysical contradictions. Throughout art history, the traditional rectangular shaped canvas has been seen as a portal, a frame to a door or window that the viewer looks through to experience the art. I intend to move the experience in front of the window rather than behind the window. I want to involve the viewer as well as the space surrounding the work. That is why scale is very important to me. Large paintings invite the viewer inside, while the experience with small artworks the viewer is outside looking in. I have noticed that when people respond to artworks, they tend to approach and inspect them closely. I believe we do this because we want to participate in the work. We want to see the brushwork and see how the painting was made. During a recent exhibition of my work in Padua, Alessandro Deponti (my art dealer in Milan) and I visited the Scrovegni Chapel, a masterwork beautifully painted by Giotto in 1305. I was particularly struck by his Lamentation of Christ. In that panel Giotto invented a remarkable device to invite the viewer into the painting. The central foreground crouching figure is the first use of the rückenfigur or staffage. Much later, in 1808, Caspar David Friedrich revisited the idea in his famous painting, Der Mönch am Meer. With their back facing the viewer of the painting, the rückenfigur device looks into the work and invites the viewer to place themselves in the exact spot (substituting the rückenfigur with themselves) in the painting. This is a long explanation but it gets to the idea that I am trying to invite the viewer into the painting and also that I look to art history to find inspiration and ideas for my work. My art attempts to create powerful and moving experiences for the viewer. I prefer to create visceral experiences rather than intellectual explanations or narratives.

E.R. This decision has led you to a long research for finding the right pictorial material which can reproduce the fluidity of the brush and, at the same time, being hard to the right point to avoid breaks. Which kind of impasto do you use?

D.M. I work with a specially made long-chain polymer. It makes an exceptionally viscus paint. Sometimes I grind my pigments using a sophisticated ultrasound machine that can create a very fine grain, enabeling me to pack the paint with the maximum amount of color. I paint on aluminum because aluminum doesn't expand or contract with changes in temperature or humidity. My paintings can be installed outdoors without any problems.

E.R. Have some great masters of the art history influenced your path? If so, which ones?

D.M. Absolutely! I would say the painters of the Venetian School, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Bellini, with a particular emphasis on Tintoretto. I love the fact that according to Carlo Ridolfi his biographer, Tintoretto had a sign in his studio that read,"Colorito di Tiziano, disegno di Michelangelo.” (Ridolfi, Carol, Vita del Tintoretto, 1642, publication). I couldn't agree more. I often refer to Titian or Michelangelo, among many others, for ideas or inspiration. I have always found the innovators in art to be the most interesting. I look at the history of art in a very atemporal way and find ideas and inspiration from all of it. A few artists I particularly focus on are Greek artists like Apelles of Kos, Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus, to Ellsworth Kelly, Judy Pfaff, Frank Stella, Anselm Kiefer, and Bill Viola. I also often look to Caspar David Friedrich, Kazimir Malevich, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning.

E.R. Can you describe us an artwork currently shown on the Artsail platform, where you are represented by ARTEA Gallery, which best reproduces your creative philosophy?

D.M. Artsail is a wonderful platform that is so rewarding and interesting to explore. ArteA Gallery features a work of mine titled, Nushu, 2019 that is 91 x 112 cm. This painting made with seven red hues is an excellent example of how my work differs from most shaped paintings. Artists like Frank Stella, Elizabeth Murray, Ellsworth Kelly, George Sugarman, Mary Heilmann make their shaped paintings by building a form before painting it. My process is the opposite. I work on a large sheet of aluminum where I paint very freely, spontainiously, and gesturally, allowing for drips and pentimenti. Once the paint is dry enough, I cut away the negative spaces. The resulting freely painted gesture determines the form of the painting. I come from a serious study of the gestural abstract work of the modernists but lived through the ironic and somewhat cynical post-moderns. My work is not negative, ironic, or cynical at all. I am striving for authenticity and a poetry of deeply felt passion.

E.R. On the 10th of September your solo show will open in Venice. Its title is "PATHWAYS". Can you tell us something more about it?

D.M. I believe the exhibition's title was conceived by Gianluca Ranzi, who generously and brilliantly curated the exhibition. He is a wonderful curator and writer who I had the great pleasure to meet at my first solo exhibition at ArteA Gallery in Milan. For me, "PATHWAYS" is a marvelous title as it touches on many different interpretations. Pathways are connectors; they take you from one place to another. They imply exploration and connections. Some are clear and well established, sometimes we make our own new pathway. The path could be the path of the brush and paint, the path of art history, the path of the artist, or the path of the viewer. I like to think of PATHWAYS as connection between the artwork, the viewer, and the artist. I was very excited to learn that my work will be shown in dialogue with the work of Tintoretto. How timely as he was working at a time the world was challenged by a plague just as we are now. I personally feel very connected to Tintoretto as he, perhaps more than any other artist of his time, worked in a very painterly, gestural, and immediate way. His pivotal painting, The miracle of the Slave or Miracle of St. Mark painted in 1548 (commissioned for the Scuola Grande di San Marco, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice), is for me among the greatest works in the history of art. The remarkable invention of Saint Mark flying over the viewers into the painting is nothing short of miraculous. This invention forces the viewers to participate in the work rather than be casual observers of the work. Perhaps the exhibition's title, "PATHWAYS," is about forging a connection between Jacopo Robusti (called Tintoretto) and Donald Martiny.

Read the interview by Elisabetta Roncati at ARTSAIL.

Interview with Donovan Irven for Whitehot Magazine: Donald Martiny, or Figures Without Ground

The art of Donald Martiny exists somewhere between painting and sculpture. We are confronted with a singular brushstroke, huge, a seemingly spontaneous, lavish eruption of color and texture on the wall. It is the mark distilled from painting, the formerly minute detail writ large, what we usually discover as a hidden and obscured part of the whole is made to be the whole itself, the entire work a gesture on the wall. 

Such dramatic works are fit for public art – Martiny is currently preparing to install a large work on the exterior of a building in Raleigh, North Carolina and is well known for his permanent displays in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. But they also lend themselves to powerful aesthetic experiences in more intimate galleries, as will be evident in upcoming solo shows in February 2021 at Madison Gallery in Solana Beach, California and in March 2021 at the Scala del Bovoli in Venice, Italy.

How did Martiny come to these oversized gestural works? Normally, the canvas frames the work, or else is itself framed, and the plane delineated by the canvas’ edge creates the ground from which a figure will arise. Sometimes the figures are strictly representational of human forms, of flora and fauna, and other times we are treated to compositions suggestive of moods, abstract expressions of a concept or emotion and so on. Whatever the content, whatever level of literalness present within the edges of the canvas, there is something that stands out from the ground of the canvas. The canvas itself sinks into the background and by becoming this background makes it possible for whatever appears to the viewer to appear.

But there is no canvas to form the ground of Martiny’s work. The wall on which the work is mounted becomes the ground, the room itself, the gallery or museum is the ground. 

Read the rest of the interview by clicking here.

A Martini Moment with Donald Martiny - Interview with Katarina Feder of Artists Rights Society

Oryo, 2019 (Dispersed pigment and polymer on aluminum), 25 × 15 in (63.5 × 38.1 cm)

Best known for his ‘frozen’ brushstrokes, Donald Martiny’s large scale abstractions manage to be both sculptural and painterly, while somehow effecting the action of performance art. It is no wonder then that Open, Martiny’s latest solo exhibition on view till January 2nd at the Dimmitt Contemporary Art in Houston, continues the artist’s exploration of the "gesture," which is made to exist forever in the present. Katarina Feder of Artists Rights Society sat down with the artist to talk contemporary culture, artistic influences, and the surprisingly delightful taste of a blue crayon.

KATARINA: Your newest show at the Dimmit Contemporary Art is called OPEN, which the curator writes is a reference to “the action of the viewer, rather than the object itself.” For all your viewers out there, what do you think we can all be a little more 'open' to and why?

DM: What a terrific question. Forgive me but my answer will not be specific to painting. We live in a time of branding, packaged information, and sound bites. Because we are all so very busy, we often gather information quickly from headlines or YouTube clips. But the world is a complex place and context is important. Modernist thinking held fast to universal and monotheistic ideals and manifestos, a sort of binary way of thinking. Post-modernism offered pluralism though often in an ironic, cynical, or critical way. We can all learn by listening better and being open to opposing views and new ideas.

KATARINA: We hear this series is inspired by Robert Motherwell. We represent him too! If you could speak to Robert and ask him one question, what would it be?

DM: If only I could. I would, without question want to hear about his time in Taxco, Mexico with Wolfgang Paalen. It was such a turning point in the history of art though not often talked about or written about. I believe their meeting played a profound role in the genesis of abstract expressionism and the New York School of painting.

KATARINA: Your works have been referred to as the “brushstroke” itself, and you paint in so many incredible and vibrant colors. If you were a color, what color would you be and why?

DM: Oh my, what a challenging question. That is like asking which note on the piano I like best. Perhaps this is the answer: I sincerely believe my fascination with art occurred at a very early age, not because of my passion for drawing, or my fascination with images, but because of a pure color experience I had when I was very young. Color has always had an intense and profound effect on me. When I was in kindergarten, I had such a powerfully visceral response to the colored crayons that I wanted to experience them by smelling, feeling, and tasting them. I remember trying to eat the phthalo blue. Perhaps that old familiar saying is right: “you are what you eat.”

KATARINA: You call your works “actual authentic gestures.” In the spirit of Thanksgiving, what was a recent authentic gesture made to you and why were you thankful for it?

DM: I feel very lucky as many people have been extraordinarily kind to me. I will never forget Douglas Durst for offering me the opportunity to create two monumental paintings to be permanently installed in the lobby of One World Trade Center. That took an exceptional amount of trust and vision on his part. It was tremendously meaningful to me personally and was a turning point in my career as an artist.

KATARINA: Your name is Martiny, so we have to ask: shaken or stirred?

DM: I am not often or quickly shaken or rattled, but I am easily stirred… emotionally. You might catch me shedding tears while reading a book or at the movie theatre. As for drinks I prefer a very dirty Martini with lots of olives.

This interview appeared in the Artist Right Society’s newsletter of November 2019.

Interview with The Art of The State

You may be familiar with Martiny’s distinctive, freeform, saturated, floating brushstroke work from his monumental installation at One World Trade Center. More recently and closer to home, you may have noted his highly visible piece in the NCMA-curated Art Window on the facade of the North Hills Bank of America Tower. Or you may have come upon Martiny’s pieces anywhere from Hong Kong to Padua, because he has spent the last several years working seven days a week, criss-crossing the globe for solo shows, major commissions, and art fair exhibitions in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Yesterday, just off the plane from Italy, he was back at work in his home studio when he agreed to sit down for an interview about his life and work for The Art of the State.

Early on as a painter, Martiny said, he painted landscapes, but felt hemmed in by the canvas. “It occurred to me that the rectangle is a portal, or a window, that you’re looking through to experience the art in a different place. And for me, it was really important to have a very intimate connection with the viewer...I wanted the art experience to be in front of the portal, not behind the portal. And also, I didn’t need a rectangle as a form. That didn’t make any sense, really.”

A lifelong student of art and art history, he noted the work of second-generation abstract expressionists: “You’ll see that they often make a strong gesture, one grand gesture, and then they’ll fill in the negative spaces.” To Martiny, “that diminished the integrity of the initial gesture, and it also took away from the power of it. So I thought, well, let’s get rid of that. So all of a sudden I had to get rid of not only the shape of the rectangle, I needed to get rid of the canvas completely. The whole ground. I had to get rid of the ground.”

Martiny’s newest work will next be exhibited in the Triangle as part of the NCMA’s Front Burner show, opening March 7.

Donald Martiny talks about his paintings with Noah Becker

It's been a long process getting an interview going with Donald Martiny. Not because he's is difficult to contact but because it takes me a while to think of the right questions to ask such a complex artist. I had the pleasure of meeting Martiny at my weekly Whitehot Magazine Art Party that happens every Tuesday night at the Jane Hotel Roof Bar in New York City. Martiny is an intelligent, warm individual who has obviously spent many years studying and perfecting his work. I've spent time with Frank Stella and I hold Martiny in the same regard as a modern master in the making. The following conversation took place aproximately one week before I met him at my party. 

Where are you from?

I was born in upstate New York in the early 50s. My family lived in a small split-level house nestled in the middle of an orchard near Ballston Lake.

When did you discover art?

The first art that I remember being aware of was the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Grant Wood which was printed in a repeat pattern on the upholstery of our living room couch. That fantastic imagery was mesmerizing to me and as spellbinding and entertaining as any storybook or film. By the time I was in my early teens we had moved to Holland, Michigan and I was devouring every art book I could get my hands on. At fourteen I began making day trips on my own to the Art Institute of Chicago via Greyhound bus, something no parent would tolerate today.

Did you attend art school?

Yes, several. I studied art history at a liberal arts college in Michigan, then moved to New York City to attend the Art Students League where I studied painting with Ronald Sherr and Terence Coyle. Later I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA) in Philadelphia.

At that time I resolutely pursued a classic academic approach to my studies focusing on the figure and landscape. I felt strongly that I needed to learn how to draw and paint before I could allow myself to push on and find my own voice.  

In the mid-70s I moved to NYC straight out of college to become a studio assistant but sadly that opportunity fell through leaving me stranded but determined to stay in New York.

I quickly landed a job managing the art book department at Doubleday on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street placing me just around the corner from many of the important art galleries, such as Betty Parsons, Marlborough, André Emmerich, to name just a few. Many notable artists visited the bookstore and one day Ellsworth Kelly came in to look for a particular book on Turner.

Remarkably generous with his time, we spent the entire afternoon talking about shaped canvases, space, color, and Brâncuși. There were many of these kind of experiences that felt inspiring and were critical to my art education.

Your work is dramatic and sculptural, how did you arrive at this idea?

A turning point occurred one day in the studio a little over a decade ago while I was starting a new painting—a de Kooning kind of gestural study.  I had painted a single brushstroke in the middle of the canvas when I stepped back to decide what my next move should be. It suddenly struck me that any other brushwork would only diminish the power and integrity of that original gesture. It felt to me that any additional marks that I might make would only be in reaction to the edge of the canvas or simply filling in the negative areas. 

I imagined the substrate falling away from a self-contained gesture and immediately began to explore how to let the brushstrokes determine the form of the painting. Once I embarked upon that journey everything changed. Without defined boundaries or limitations to the form, I had to come up with a whole new paradigm of what it meant for me to create a “painting.” This pushed me in every conceivable way to develop paint and support systems that would help me realize this idea.

What historical artists inspire you?

There are many but I am particularly attracted to the innovators.  For example I am in awe of the painterly approach developed by Giorgione and Titian. They were exceptional in their application of loose brushwork, subtlety of tone and pure sensual expression.  They pioneered a lyrical way of seeing things unique to the Venetian school that was without precedent. No one had seen paint like that before. Also I recently discovered the work of the Polish constructivist sculptor Katarzyna Kobro. I find her sculptures absolutely remarkable in the way she uniquely organizes space Her work titled, Space Composition 4 (1929) is so brilliant and deceivingly complex that I can hardly stop thinking about it.

If you could be one historical figure who would you be?

I love to imagine what it must have been like for the first person to draw an image. How magical and powerful that must have been.  I recently saw Antony Gormley’s film, How Art Began and found it to be stunningly inspiring and fascinating. The tenderness, attention and perhaps even love that is evident in some of those early cave paintings is breathtaking.  It is interesting to think of creating an image when no image existed before.  How does that happen?

Do you read a lot?

I read voraciously.  In the evening I like to read novels and every morning my wife, who is also an artist, and I share a study time.  Together we read about art history, theory, criticism, and philosophy.  Currently we are reading texts by Yve-Alain Bois,  Isabelle Graw,  and Rosalind Krauss. 

What does color mean to you and how to you arrive at specific colors?

I never think of, or use color in a political or symbolic way, nor do I approach color in a scientific or theoretical way like say Goethe, Chevreul, Itten, or Albers. In fact I don’t really think of paint as paint, or color as color.  I experience painting as pushing and  moving pure sensation and feeling, e.g., sympathy, elation, agitation, ecstasy, sorrow, passion. More than an exploration of optics or beauty my use of color is a kind of spiritual quest.

What is your work made from, or rather how is it constructed?  

My process begins with sketching and play.  I make sketches everyday, usually first thing in the morning, although sometimes I change things up and sketch in the evening or even late at night for different light and mood.   

I have a dedicated wall in my studio that I fill with my favorites and live with them for awhile.  If a sketch still excites me after a period of time I may attempt to make a larger work using it as a starting point or an inspiration.  The goal is not to replicate or simply blow up the sketch but to capture the spirit and feeling of it. 

The floor of my studio is covered with aluminum,  I think of it as an arena. I paint on the floor using my hands or brushes I make from brooms. I am not one to paint from the wrist or from the elbow, I am literally in the paint. And I usually paint directly without drawing.

The paint I use is a mix of pigment with a long-chain polymer. Often I grind my pigment using an Ultrasound machine that allows me to maximize the amount of pigment I can load into my mixture. I spend an absurd amount of time mixing colors.

Once the color feels right, I may use any number of modifiers to adjust the viscosity, rheology, stiffness, open time, transparency, etc.  My large works require gallons and gallons of paint.

Once the paint is dry I cut away the negative areas of aluminum leaving only the paint. My process is constantly evolving as I am always pushing my materials, processes, and ideas. 

What would you like the viewers experience to be seeing a show of your work?

I believe you are asking about intentionality.  I want my paintings to possess their own life force, their own “breath of life.” I want to offer an intimate, engaging, and authentic experience between the viewer and the artwork. Additionally, I work hard to create work that has a dialogue with the history of painting but at the same time is not beholden to it. 

What’s next for you?

I have been invited by a private foundation to exhibit in Padua, Italy. The venue is an elegant but dated building situated on a canal.  Padua is home to the wonderful Giotto fresco cycle (1305)  housed at the Cappella degli Scrovegni (Arena Chapel). This will be my first time exhibiting in Padua and I am quite excited about it. WM

Read the interview on the Whitehot Magazine website by clicking here.

Advise And Select - Vasari21

Question: How do you edit down your works prior to a visit from a writer, a dealer, or a curator? Whom do you trust to help you weed out the good from the bad from the meh?

Donald Martiny: I curate my work for studio visits by cleaning and organizing my space, thinking of my presentation as a narrative story. I have found it effective to place sketches, studies, and maquettes in plain view and lead the visitor from those to the finished works, so that the developmental process is clearly evident.

It’s important for the visitor to be comfortable, but not too comfortable, so I offer something simple to drink like water or tea, and some almonds or blueberries.  If the visit goes long and leads to a serious, extended conversation, I am always prepared to offer more interesting food and drink.

As for editing my work. I almost never collaborate or discuss what I’m going to show, as I have a good handle on what I want the visit to achieve. When I do discuss my choices, it is with my wife, Celia Johnson, who is a painter with an amazing eye, and who always tells me the hard truth.

Read the entire article on Vasari21.com.

Talk with Hong Kong Tatler: Donald Martiny Proves There’s Power Behind Every Brushstroke

Donald Martiny might not be a household name in Asia (yet), but having painted his way to the lobby of the south entrance of One World Trade Centre in New York, the North Carolina-based artist’s massive sculptural brushstroke paintings never go unnoticed no matter where they are.

The scale and the detail of Donald’s works are so impressive that they've changed the way audiences interact with art, thanks to their heavily textured and three-dimensional shapes, which he creates using tools like brooms, mops and his own hands.

The energy packed in Donald's paintings is overwhelming, as the artist himself once said, “brushstrokes are dances trapped in paintings.” We spoke to the gestural abstractionist to find out more about the paint he's created specifically for his works, and the emotions "trapped" in his larger-than-life pieces:

Tell us about your passion for art, how did it all start?

My passion for art began at a very early age. I believe it began when I was in kindergarten. While I loved to draw and was fascinated with images, I believe the most powerful thing for me was colour. I was very excited by the pure colours of paints and crayons. It affected me in a powerful and visceral way, and it still does.

As I grew older, I was hungry to see paintings but we didn’t live near any art museums, so I relied on art books and magazines that I found in the local library. I visited an art museum for the first time when I was around 14 years old, the Art Institute of Chicago, and I was astounded by the scale of the works. It was tremendously thrilling.

Your works look like strokes from the world’s largest paintbrush, how did you come up with such a unique medium?

Have you noticed when people respond to a work of art in a gallery or museum, they often walk up close to it? I believe we do that because we want to become involved in the process of creating the art. We want to see and feel the brushstrokes.

There is so much information in the brushwork: whether or not the artist painted from the wrist or the shoulder, the artist was right or left-handed, he painted fast or slow, etc. By making large brushstrokes, the viewer is immediately placed up close and has a better opportunity to have an intimate relationship with the work.

An artist’s brushstrokes are as unique as fingerprints, as they represent the artist’s energy and emotions. What kind of emotions are packed in your works?

My paintings are actual authentic gestures. These brushstrokes are very much me and I want to be present in the works as honestly and authentically as I can be. They are a record of my physicality at a specific point in time. My paintings celebrate life, hope, kindness and love.

The paint you use in your works is unusual, can you tell us about it?

I make my own paint. It is a water-based polymer saturated with pigment. Sometimes I add microbubbles into the mixture to make the paintings lighter or more workable.

Once dry, the paintings are very light and hard. It took many years to figure out how to make a paint that could do what I want it to do, as oil paint would be far too brittle and acrylic paint would be too rubbery and floppy.

Donald Martiny, Abipo (2017), polymer and pigment mounted on aluminium, 236.2 x 104 cm. (Photo: Courtesy of Donald Martiny)

Of all the paintings you’ve done, do you have a favourite?

My favourite painting is always the last one I've made. My art practice is a journey. I don’t know if the paintings I am working on today are better than the works I made years ago, but they are where I am now.

What’s next for you?

I am working on a number of projects. I just finished a very large work that I will be installing in Cologne, Germany. I have an exhibition opening in Milan at the end of November, and two museum exhibitions scheduled for 2018—one in Louisiana, USA and one in Germany.

I am also working on a large-scale painting that will be installed in a public space in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.