‘It was always drawing. Even if it was canvas, it was drawing with paint.’
E. Martinez, ‘Eddie Martinez in Conversation with Claire Gilman’, in Eddie Martinez: Extra Drawings, 2023
‘For me, it’s about speed, really. That’s what gets me the most excited, something that is without a lot of thought. A lot of abstract painters, this stuff was all about speed.’
E. Martinez, ‘Eddie Martinez in Conversation with Claire Gilman’, in Eddie Martinez: Extra Drawings, 2023
‘It’s not uncommon for painters to be prolific drawers; indeed, drawing is often the place where artists work out their ideas prior to taking the more drastic and unforgiving step of applying paint to canvas. For Martinez, however, drawing has never been a subsidiary or preliminary activity but an enterprise that fuels his entire creative output, providing the steady hum that grounds his work and life in general.’
C. Gilman, Eddie Martinez: Studio Wall, exh. cat., New York: The Drawing Center, Brussels: Triangle Books, 2023
‘I don’t know color theory, and I’m not concerned if I’m doing it right or if I’m doing it wrong. It’s just the way I do it.’
E. Martinez, in T. Loos, ‘Eddie Martinez’s Triumphant Abstractions Land at the Bronx Museum of the Arts’, Cultured Magazine, November 2018
‘Drawing, in Martinez’s case, is not confined to the studio. It pervades nearly every moment of his waking life as he carries pen and paper with him on the subway, to the doctor’s office, to restaurants, and to other work and leisure events.’
C. Gilman, Eddie Martinez: Studio Wall, exh. cat., New York: The Drawing Center, Brussels: Triangle Books, 2023
‘Martinez’s still lifes do not simply imiate the genre, but explode it. Much as his figures are all abstracted self-portraits, so the bottles, plants, food and assorted junk in the still lifes are not always recognizable objects, but instead function as building blocks with which to construct a painting.’
J. Ribas, ‘A Paradox of Genre’, in Eddie Martinez, exh. cat., New York: ZieherSmith, 2008
‘Martinez’s tennis balls are potent portals. He is even able to use them to make a mandala, an abstract representation of the cosmos with a metaphysical or spiritual purpose. Stay Open (2016–2019), places a ring of them in orbit around the outer edge of a “universe” of a painting. (Or maybe it is an image of one ball shown as if it were stop-motion animation?) Again, paintings don’t move, but mandalas are meant to move us dramatically.’
T. R. Myers, ‘Face Space’, in Eddie Martinez: Fast Eddie, exh. cat., Detroit: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 2019
‘Ushered into the life of the studio, these small sketches inform Martinez’s large drawings, paintings, and sculptures, sometimes physically entering another work to become buried amid the paint, at other times remain[ing] sovereign and intact.’
C. Gilman, Eddie Martinez: Studio Wall, exh. cat., New York: The Drawing Center, Brussels: Triangle Books, 2023
‘Frequently, Martinez reworks the sketches so that when he returns the drawings to the wall they read as distinct compositions, bearing traces of the old even as they introduce new observations. In this way, the drawings provide a living catalogue of the artist’s creative process – one that is open, responsive, and always changing.’
C. Gilman, Eddie Martinez: Studio Wall, exh. cat., New York: The Drawing Center, Brussels: Triangle Books, 2023
‘I remember in the 80s [my mom] used to have a large newsprint pad that she would draw on, very 80s-appropriate, fantasy stuff like The Hobbit and fairies and unicorns and I would watch her do that. I was really intrigued by that. And then I got into comics and copying Ziggy and Garfield and, when I got a little older, Calvin and Hobbes and The Simpsons and skateboarding and the graphics and, at about ten, I think, [drawing] was an intentional thing I would do.’
E. Martinez, ‘Eddie Martinez in Conversation with Claire Gilman’, in Eddie Martinez: Extra Drawings, 2023
Unless otherwise stated:
© Eddie Martinez. Photo: courtesy of the artist, and JSP-Art-Photography
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