The Rymer Gallery

Symbolism is a school of art that allows ideas to disguise themselves as objects. The point seems to be to figure out which ideas are hiding in the guns, which in the roses.

I employ symbols as a prank – not so much a prank on the viewer as a prank on the characters in my scenes. So these works are not exactly symboli...c in the sense of Symbolism. I think of myself as a sort of Representational artist – a maker of representational images about the challenges of confronting and interpreting symbols.

This scheme works best when the characters are wearing uniforms or earnestly attempting to perform a task. Pranks on the job are much funnier than pranks on the playground. And when we see someone in a uniform in our daily lives, we decide based on context clues whether they are more significant as a person or a symbol.

These days interpreting symbols is a critical life-skill. Even if our bodies are matter-of-fact, most information worth gathering is tied up in symbols.

There is also a strong narrative component to these works. Pranks achieve their effect by trapping their targets in humiliating predicaments. Predicaments are like the little pieces of tape that bind narratives together, as well as the magnets that attract our sustained attention.

Pranks are means of altering, destabilizing, or otherwise abusing conventional narratives.

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I cannot deny my voyeuristic nature. I think the allure of calculating the emotions that lurk just behind the face of an individual is what put me on this path. I spent some years as a commissioned portrait painter getting to know my medium and technique and after having my fill of being told what to paint, I began tru...sting my imagination.

Now the figures I deal with are almost exclusively my own inventions. I see faces and figures in everything the same way people see the man in the moon. I like to leave chaotic washes to dry then bring what I see to light. The intimacy of portraiture takes on a life of its own when the subject is an invention, creating a bizarre air of ambiguity. It's fascinating to witness the way each viewer gleans something personal from the work. Equally seductive is the mystery of where the images actually come from. I don't exactly know. However, I do feel a need for the work to evoke a feeling similar to the one i get when looking at a dingy old photograph or a film that forces my imagination back in time. A muted palette and some traditional techniques assist in evoking this feeling of nostalgia. I want my work to lure the viewer's imagination into a foreign and mysterious place in time.

A Nashville, TN native, Julia Martin has made her mark in the city's ever-growing art scene. A collector's darling, Martin's name is associated with Nashville's top galleries, and she has been asked to present and speak about her work at some of the city's premiere institutions.

Martin lets her work speak for itself, remaining dedicated to her ever-prolific output in lieu of seeking the spotlight. Not unlike the silent subjects of her portraits, Martin remains simultaneously aloof and playful, introverted and compelling.

Like many painters, Julia Martin discovered art as a teenager. It was a passionate high school teacher who encouraged her curiosity, and piqued her desire to pursue an arts education.

After attending a summer session at New York's School of Visual Arts, Martin was more determined than ever. She became one of the first students to attend the Fine Arts program at the School of the Visual Arts in Savannah, GA.



Upon returning to Tennessee, Martin took up her brushes and plied her skills painting portraits. While honing her art-business savvy painting commissions for executives, her creativity languished. Although Matin had a strong technical foundation, like every young artist, she struggled to find a voice of her own.



"I forced myself to work solely from my imagination... to create my own language as a painter," explains Martin. Turing a natural voyeurism inward, she began to invest her new subjects with the emotional and temporal depth her early work had hinted at.



Martin's latest canvases find her emotive subjects populating dream-scenes, musing on wonders, or perhaps simply laughing to themselves. Surreal and silly, brooding and bizarre; Martin's paintings stand alone as icons, fables, or postcards from the dreamtime. Together, her evolving body of work is like a sci-fi valentine evoking nostalgia for the future: a sense of deja vu about something you can't recall.Read More