Tuesday, July 24, 2012

GENESIS: Eugene James Martin / July 24, 1938


"Eugene was always quite flexible in his work habits; he said he was at his sharpest mentally in the morning, so that’s when he would do most of his creative work. But he would basically go in and out of his studio all day long, which, wherever we lived, was a room or area in our living quarters. He never had a huge, separate studio to really fully spread out. He would have loved it though, to be able to paint really large works, to see where this adventure would have led him. But he always adapted to the circumstances of the moment. During periods when the money was very tight, he would make graphite drawings, or pen and inks on paper. When he couldn’t afford the paper, he would draw on napkins. As soon as financial circumstances would brighten up a bit again, he’d be able to afford paint tubes, linen, canvas, and so forth. When it was getting close to the end of the month and there was no spare change left, he just might round up a bunch of his earlier works on paper, cut them up, and reassemble the pieces into reinvented mixed media collages. To him, the medium was not that important, the creative act was."

-- Suzanne Fredericq,  Eugene Martin's widow

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