Martha braun

I have been painting most of my life and continue to find it not only stimulating and challenging, but also a part of my being. With each new painting I strive to realize a fuller potential from the work and myself.

I have studied and been influenced by the abstract expressionist painters from the movement in the 1950s and before including Hoffman, Rothko, Motherwell, Mitchell and others on the East coast. My strongest influence has been Richard Diebenkorn and the works he did in California and then New Mexico.

I have degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in Architectural interior design. For 25 years I practiced interior design as a professional member of ASID, in San Francisco CA, owning my own design firm.

When I retired in 2000, my family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where I began painting full time and studying with an established abstract painter. Over the years I believe I have found myself in my art, and while I will always experiment, as is the case with all good painters, I now am feeling at home with the evolution of my work.

I believe that the many years I worked as an interior designer, surrounded with color, texture and composition involving the challenge of creating beauty and excitement by combining those elements has sharpened my senses and has influenced how I paint today. Since I paint in layers using glazes and handmade papers along with paint and other mediums, I am constantly concerned with how these elements interact with one another in much the same way as when I was designing a house. I find myself always questioning if the elements of the painting are working together and if they are not!

My paintings are a complex exploration of the relationships that exist between the interaction of color, line, space and movement. How each of these influences one another to create the visual entity which is an abstract painting.

From my many years of experience and love of color, I have developed techniques with the paint and materials I use to manipulate and expand once intellect to reach for higher levels of imagination.

I attempt, in each painting, to offer a unique and delicate sense of balance and tension that at once excites and then quiets the mind.

Through many layers of paint and materials I create a personal experience in which the viewer will find unlimited interpretations.