Email:	Martin
	About the Artist - Martin

Martin has an extensive and eclectic body of works spanning the years from the early 1970's to now and is currently working on a series of paintings based on the Ocean Rd in Vic. He is also designing and planning a new building project at Kennett River on the Ocean Rd. Martin's paintings reflect his observations and thoughts on the human condition and the world we live in, while his building design tries to minimise human impact by reflecting the natural landscape with the use of organic forms and materials such as timber and stone. Within his painting medium the application of textures and layers create a richness and depth to his interpretation of environment and society. The use of newsprint layers is a recurring theme and seems to be symbolic. His paintings also have distortions and fragmentations, which Martin explains as assimilating the remnant visual symptoms remaining from a bout of chronic fatigue syndrome which effected his creative output in the 80's. Martins' early influences were the works of prominent Australian artists of the 60's and 70's, Dobell, Lloyd Rees, Authur Boyd, Syd Nolan, Fred Williams and Brett Whitely. After a post graduate year in Europe and seeing Constant Nieunhuis's work at the Stadelijk in Amsterdam, Martin restudied the European masters to relearn painting. Constant showed you could be contemporary but you didn't need to turn your back on the evolution of European and western art. Martin's other influences have come from the study of Philosophy, Psychology, Science and Literature. Socrates, Plato, J Krishnamurti, Shakespeare, Freud, Jung, Victor Frankil, Darwin, Einstein, Hawking. The writings of Alvin Tofler, Scott Peck, Jostein Guaarder, Richard Dawkins and others. Since the 80's Martin has also involved himself in a passion other than painting that compliments his desire to create unique and meaningful works of art. Martin describes his building designs as "sculpture that people inhabit". Martin has not only designed many great "sculptures" that blend organic lines with natural materials, due to their individual features and his attention to detail, he personally constructs these designs. Many of these have been created in the Dandenong Ranges and the Otways areas of Victoria. The earlier design and construction projects were instigated by Martin and later projects being commissions from clients who had seen evidence of his work.

Studies and Exhibitions Martin was born on the 30th of August 1952 in Enschede, Holland. Migrating to Australia in 1959, his preliminary studies in Art & Design began in 1973 at the Wollongong Institute of Technology, New South Wales. Following this Martin completed a diploma of Art & Design at the Gordon Institute of Technology in Geelong Victoria between 1974 and 1976. He then returned to his native Holland to do Post Graduate studies at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunst (AKI), finishing these studies in 1978. It was at the completion of these studies that Martin had his first solo exhibition at Gallerie de Pook, Hengelo, Holland. Complimenting this was as "Artist Profile" that was published in "Tubantia", Enschede. Soon after returning to Australia in 1979, Martin exhibited solo at "Stairs Gallery" in Wollongong and was invited to participate in a travelling group exhibition named "Young Contemporaries of New South Wales". Due to his involvement in Design and construction projects, Martin doesn't exhibit regularly and didn't exhibit at all during the 80's. He exhibited again solo at "Stuart Gerstman Galleries" Southbank, Victoria in 1993. In 1996 he was funded by "Arts Victoria" to exhibit at Gabriel Galleries (Footscray Community Art Centre). Currently Martin's paintings can be viewed at QDOS Allenvale Rd Lorne. Martin's works are in numerous private collections in Australia and the Netherlands.

Artist Statement I don't like an identity to determine what I do, I don't think about being an artist. To be too preoccupied with the idea of being an artist has the potential of making art for arts sake. Art for me is a by product of living a life. Art is a vehicle for trying to express what it is to be human. I'm currently working on the Ocean Road and Otway series of painting, as well as a new building project at Kennett River. I've travelled this area of Victoria many times, but not until I moved there and started to absorb and become a part of it did I consider responding to the area as an artist. The process for me is not to isolate a particular scene and respond visually to that. I need to know a place by living and working there and then what I experience goes through a sort of emotional and spiritual filter before it's regurgitated as paint and whatever onto canvas. It's similar with portraiture. I need to know someone before I attempt to paint them. If I don't, I only end up with a likeness and the spiritual and emotional that is, in essence the person, seems to be missing from the painting. The evolution of painting from early cave painting and aboriginal art, through renaissance and baroque, impressionism, dada/surrealism to abstract expressionism and modernism have been an influence. They need to be because they happened and can't be ignored. Painting can be difficult because tradition tries to dictate method and materials. It's something I'm always having to consider. To know when brush and paint need to make way for something else. I'm constantly searching for a mutation that might work. I use the newsprint because I find I can say something, but in a more subtle way. I can paint or glaze over it until there is only a hint of it left. Newsprint is interesting because it is a good indicator of the consciousness of society at a given point in time. I can remember finding a number of pages from a now extinct newspaper that were more than 75 years old. Reading an old newspaper has an amazing ability to transport you back to another time, to be a part of the consciousness of that time. A consciousness that didn't include knowledge of the second world war and other events. In a way the newsprint puts a time and place on the painting. It's a Symbol of the human influence in a place.

Martin Vierdag