A fascinating story and the art looks amazing. The exhibit is on at Hamilton Art Gallery until 29 October.
His sister, left to deal with her brother’s deceased estate, thinks Martiensen’s paintings are rubbish and immediately makes moves to get rid of them.
She sounds like a peach. I wouldn’t have let her visit either.
All jokes aside, absolutely sick linework on the art. It takes a lot of practice to get the smooth steadiness of a confident stroke (slow careful lines go wobbly) and also have it accurate.
Nice contrast on the colours too. It’s arresting and allows a lot of detail without being a confusing mess, and the composition does the same. There’s movement of your eyes from the different contrasting shapes but there’s enough space and harmonious arrangement that it doesn’t look cluttered or overwhelming.
I also really like how the shapes are overlapped and changing each others colours. It gives the illusion that they’re transparent. And the different lines needed to make those colour transitions are perfectly on point so that doesn’t ruin the effect of each being a single piece.
I don’t know a lot about the subject, don’t really go for abstracts and can’t really tell the deeper emotional themes behind the art but I agree this guy was very talented.
Also considering he painted that well at speed
She might be like me and just not know anything about art at all. I’d look at my sibling’s scribbles, and not assume for a minute they were worth anything. I have an arty wife though who would be able to provide a second opinion.
The story though is fascinating.
He is absolutely fantastic.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s the late 1980s and inside a derelict farmhouse on the outskirts of Mount Gambier in South Australia, a reclusive, retired high school maths teacher begins constructing exquisite wooden boxes, each unique, their organic forms determined by the chunk of wood they came from.
A solitary man with a brilliant mind, in retirement Martiensen retreats into the farmhouse he was raised in and begins working at a frenzied pace.
His sister, left to deal with her brother’s deceased estate, thinks Martiensen’s paintings are rubbish and immediately makes moves to get rid of them.
Days after his death in 2007, the extraordinary discovery of Martiensen’s artworks came across the desk of Elizabeth Arthur, a psychotherapist and art valuer who lives just across the state border, in Hamilton, Victoria.
Since then, she has spent many years studying, sorting and cataloguing Martiensen’s works, interviewing his friends and family and eventually published a book about him in 2020.
As a psychotherapist, Dr Arthur has taken a deep interest in the unique and brilliant mind of Martiensen, but as an art valuer she said it was also clear that he had a masterful hand.
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