“My work is inspired by both indoor spaces and outdoor panoramas and is largely an exploration of how light enables an environment to take form. As I interpret domestic spaces these interior worlds have the potential to become landscapes of objects, furniture and architecture. I work both from life and images based on my home and studio in Philadelphia, landscapes from places I visit, like the summer house in Blue Hill, Maine. Taking advantage of the variety of vistas one encounters in Maine, my paintings investigate how structures relate to there surroundings and the near by water. While my work retains a representational focus, I place particular emphasis on tonal qualities and brushwork. Ultimately, I aim to convey some level of universality in my examinations of light and landscape.” Martenson is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and has lived in the Philadelphia area since 1978. Parts of his summers are spent in Maine with his wife and daughter who together rent a farmhouse situated on seventeen acres, in view of Cadillac Mountain. Martenson exhibits regularly, having shown work in galleries in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, Individual Creative Opportunity stipends from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Pew Fellowship on the Arts grant for study at the Vermont Studio Center and a Cresson European Traveling Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Douglas Martenson

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For additional information, updated biography etc.,
contact Sherry French,
Director of Sherry French Gallery at 212-647-8867.


Click here for artist's biography Douglas Martenson