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Of his art, visual
artist Eugene Martin has said: “There are opposing forces in all
living things. My work reflects this and stirs up a contrast of
emotions in the viewer… perception versus annoyance. There is the
obvious and there is that which defies explanation. To the viewer
who has reached that level of awareness, my work is no longer
abstract, but very real”. Martin’s personal, often gently humorous
works may incorporate whimsical allusions to animal and machine
among areas of pure abstraction, but his art is difficult to
classify. Eugene J. Martin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1938,
and after the age of five grew up in foster care both in D.C. and on
a farm in Clarksburg, Maryland. After being honorably dismissed
from the Navy, he enrolled in the Corcoran School of Art in
Washington D.C. from 1960-1963, and became a full-time visual
artist. He did not belong to any school or art movement, remaining
an individualist and loner throughout his life. He briefly lived in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from 1990-1994, returned to Washington
DC and in 1996 moved to Lafayette, Louisiana with his wife, a
biologist, whom he married in 1988. He suffered a brain hemorrhage
and stroke in 2001, but continued to paint. Martin’s art, ranging
from graphite drawings, pen and ink works on paper, collages, to
oils, and acrylics on paper and canvas, has been exhibited, among
others, at the Acadiana Arts Center; the Ogden Museum of Southern
Art; the Opelousas Museum of Art; the Zigler Museum; Cultural
Center, Oudenaarde, Belgium; the Chapel Hill N.C. Horace Williams
House; Duke University; Corcoran Gallery. In 1959 a portrait drawing
of his won a prize at the Montgomery Art Fair in Maryland, and his
work was reproduced in The Carolina Quarterly, vol. 38(2),
1986.Martin's work is found in numerous private collections
worldwide including those of Isabel Taylor Works of Art and Kofi
Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. His works are
included in the permanent collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern
Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, the Paul R. Jones Collection,
University of Delaware, The Stowitts Museum & Library, the
Alexandria Museum of Art, the Walter O.Evans Collection of African
American Art, Savannah, Georgia, and the Munich Museum of Modern
Art.
Solo exhibitions:
2007 Walter Anderson Museum, Mississippi
2007 Louisiana State University, Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition
Gallery
2007 Alexandria Museum of Art, Louisiana
2006 The Stowitts Museum and Library, California
2005 Cité des Arts, Lafayette, Louisiana
2005 Café des Amis, Breaux Bridge, LA
2005 Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, Louisiana
2005 Clementine’s, New Iberia, Louisiana
2000 Zigler Museum, Jennings, Louisiana
2000 Opelousas Art Museum, Opelousas, Louisiana
1996 Cultural Center, Oudenaarde, Belgium
1994 Lilly Gallery, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
1992 Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Group exhibitions:
2005 Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Louisiana
2004 Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, Louisiana
1991 Student Union Gallery, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill
1981 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
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