Artist Daniel Martin

In his recent work, artist Daniel Martin
shows portraits of people where the face is not fully painted. Facial parts seem to disappear in the paint. Martin is always looking for new forms and even regularly puts the knife in his art.

Together with materials found on the street, he uses the fragments of a painting to create an entirely new work of art. For the artist, the head is the beginning and end of a universe: the place where everything happens and reality emerges. In his portraits, imperfection always has a place. Imperfection, like the growth on a tree. The faces dissolve, or return, in the chaos of nature. It produces a disturbing image.

Martin, whose parents worked in a museum, grew up with many sources of inspiration but, he says, continues to be influenced every day.

Dissecting a work completely is not something I believe in. Everyone looks at it differently anyway and has a different interpretation and truth."

Artist Daniel Martin
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the violation of the face

The spectator is deliberately taken out of his 'comfort zone'

Together with materials found on the street, he uses the fragments of a painting to create an entirely new work of art. Daniel Martin’s work is typified by robust materials interspersed with finely painted portraits. In his current work, he searches for properties of matter. The portraits and sculptures have no definitive form and possess different realities about how they can be perceived.

As a result, the paintings become more like wall objects. The addition of abstract forms in wood and other materials in combination with his portraits gives a sense of craft. The craft of layering and roughness give a see-through to his portraits and the skill of Daniel’s studies of the face.

Training: Daniel Martin

(born Leiden – 1982) trained as an artist at the Free Academy in The Hague and the Mix Academy in Amsterdam. His artworks can be seen in Cuba, The Hague, Mexico, New York, Leiden and Oudewater.

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