Martha Mccowin

For me, art and design have always played integral roles. In my other life as a graphic designer, portrait artist and muralist, the work is necessarily outcome driven. In my personal creative practice however, I'm drawn to an exploration purely of process. I seek to access a place of unknowing, giving visual form to an emotional experience beyond words. . .

During the making, the work transforms many times from one state to another: from considered processes to those more extemporaneous and instinctive, and often back again. Ultimately, each piece is an exploration of the space between the deliberate and the unintentional. Layers are applied and alternately buried and unearthed, in a way mirroring the processes at work in the human soul. . .

By exploring a variety of media and responding intuitively as each layer reacts with those before it, I coax out effects both subtle and overt in the color, texture and composition of a piece. Oil and cold wax (and sometimes metal leaf, resin, nails and burnt paper) coalesce and interact to yield fortuitous outcomes. Not confining myself to one medium enables me to experiment, explore and evolve – invariably refining my craft. . .

T.S. Eliot once said of Dante that "genuine poetry...

Martha McCowin was raised in Michigan and received her BFA in Painting and a BA in French from Albion College. In addition, she has studied at L'école supérieure d'art et design de Grenoble, France, and the Art Students League of Denver. She holds an associates degree in graphic arts from the Colorado Institute of Art (now the Art Institute of Colorado) and has been in the graphic design industry for over three decades specializing in branding, identity development, and marketing. . . . Over the years, Martha has continued to pursue her fine art and has attended classes and workshops in abstract painting with Judy Anderson, Amy Guion Clay, and most recently utilizing the medium of cold wax and oil with Janice Mason Steeves. In the past 15 years she has also been a portrait and mural artist. During that time she has studied portraiture, figure drawing, and plein air painting with Anthony Ryder, Burton Silverman, Quang Ho, and Doug Dawson. Her portraits and figurative paintings have been exhibited at the R.L. Foster Gallery and Art Students League of Denver, and hang in private collections in the U.S. and South America. She currently resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.