Audio Stop 739

NARRATOR: 

What do you see in this vibrant, turbulent landscape by artist Mario Martinez?  You’ll be hard pressed to find much Native American imagery – or any recognizable imagery at all.  Martinez is a great admirer of abstract painters like Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning, and his work reflects this influence – the swirling colors, the energetic brushstrokes…

MARIO MARTINEZ: 

Being an abstract painter in the Indian field was not the usual, and so I always felt very different about it.  I knew that it was different, but I was going to persist in doing it because that’s the only way that I knew how to do it.

But it’s my version of abstraction that comes from old sources like modernism, and my tribe and the concepts and spiritual awarenesses in my tribe all melding together.

NARRATOR: 

Martinez is an enrolled member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. 

MM: 

In our ceremonies, we don’t allow pictures.  I just knew that those things were sacred to us.

So I don’t ever give myself license to, in general, express Native concepts or culture or images the way maybe other artists can and do.

Sometimes there are certain designs in my paintings that arise from Indigenous designs or specifically Yaqui designs in a very abstracted way, and they mean something to me, but I don’t say what they mean to the general public.

NARRATOR: 

In place of recognizable cultural references, Martinez offers a more idiosyncratic vision of the physical and metaphysical world.  Yet he believes others will still be able to find meaning and connection in his life-affirming abstractions.

MM: 

And it’s really a landscape. It’s nature. It’s natural forms. It’s organic.  All life is there, I hope, in my version.