This article was originally published in
Proxart Magazine, Spring 2012. Get your copy here.
Colin Martin is a philosopher of visual landscape. His aim is not only to capture or create an image that is pleasing to the eye, but to also cause the viewer to ask questions. His pieces seek to engage your mind and your heart, with subtle but distinct statements or questions about the human experience. His love for inanimate objects—especially buildings and living spaces—has translated into multiple series, trying to figure out what gives certain spaces their identity, and how human interaction with these objects changes or compliments a particular space. I had a chat with Martin, a native of Dublin, Ireland. Being eight hours ahead of me, he was gracious enough to stay up late and let me in to his world of questioning the mundane, finding meaning in common areas, and allowing music to inspire both the artist and the viewer.
Ben Panama: Where exactly are you from? And where are you living now?
Colin Martin: I am from Dublin, Ireland, and am currently based here.
BP: What’s the weather like there this time of year? It’s about 68 and cloudy here in Southern California.
CM: Sounds nice. The weather is fine here at the moment. It has been a mild winter, no snow; but the rest of Europe is freezing.
BP: Very nice. Do you get a lot of snow in Dublin? I’m pretty geographically ignorant.
CM: Some winters. Last winter, there was a lot of snow. But the climate is usually mild—not too cold in the winter and mild summers.
BP: Sounds like a nice place to live. I’ve noticed in Chalet Town that you portray the weather as calm and ideal: not too cold, not too warm. At least, that’s the feeling I get. Is that on purpose?
CM: The Chalet Town paintings were made from research photographs taken in the winter; the place was mostly deserted. The location is in France, and they were taken in January.
BP: Did you take them yourself? What kind of research were you conducting?
CM: Yes, they are my own photographs. I was traveling around looking at vernacular architecture—the type of architecture that is found in holiday towns. I made a short film there.
BP: Had you been to that particular town before?
CM: Yes, it is near a friend’s house. In a way though, it was supposed to be nonspecific, like an Americana space.
BP: It’s funny you mention that, because the houses and scenery remind me of places here in Southern California, as well as the Pacific Northwest.
CM: Yes, I haven’t been to California, but I would like to visit.
BP: I noticed you didn’t photograph or paint any people. Is there significance to that?
CM: All the spaces and places I have used in painting and film are devoid of people, I suppose to focus on the details of the spaces themselves. I am interested in the narrative of the space itself. One of the titles, “Pacific Ocean Blue,” is a reference to the Dennis Wilson album.
BP: And is “Day Sleeper” in reference to the R.E.M. song of the same name?
CM: Yes, I listen to a lot of music when I am painting; so if a title seems to fit, I’ll use it.
BP: Speaking on the narrative of space, what would you say the narrative of Chalet Town is?
CM: The narrative is about a dormitory town, but also about how an Americana space is as much a psychological or mythologized space. The other influence was Robert Venturi’s Learning From Las Vegas, which talks about vernacular architecture.
BP: Is there a personality in inanimate objects?
CM: I am interested in the way spaces are organized and value systems that underpin them. For Chalet Town, I was interested in the way the buildings are designed in a provisional way to their environment. They are built on flood plain, so the living spaces are raised. In other film work, such as Basic Spaces, I was interested in the idea of the warehouse and how the same form can be organized for very different outcomes.
BP: And what were the outcomes you found in Basic Spaces, as well as Chalet Town?
CM: Basic Spaces is a film installation in three sequences, shot in a pre-election count centre, a green screen, and a recycling centre. There is an element in each of organizing the outside world, but each has a very different narrative charge (political, cultural, or social). “Outcomes” is more specific to this piece; with Chalet Town, it was more the general atmosphere of the setting.
BP: And what were the outcomes you found with Basic Spaces?
CM: Each space takes aspects of the world and organizes it in some way. The count centre was filmed just before the election in Ireland last year—which was a historic election after the EU bailout. The green screen is a filmic space, and the recycling centre is a space that sanitizes what society does not want. I have made three other sequences that are part of this, but are not on the website: an archive, a media newsroom, and Occupy Dame Street.
BP: I’d like to talk about another series you did, A Minor Place. Although similar to Chalet Town, it seems like A Minor Place contains traces of humans—as if we just missed the people in the painting. What was the reason for that?
CM: A Minor Place has that sense of an establishing shot in cinema, as if characters have either left or may enter the scene. That’s exactly the feeling I got when looking through the series: that I stumbled upon somebody else’s area when they had just left.
BP: What was the reason behind using paint as your medium, rather than the original photograph?
CM: That’s a difficult question. The source photographs I use tend to lean toward the familiar. The act of painting and the attentiveness that accompanies that creates a different type of looking; it heightens the narrative charge. A lot of the photos I take are overlooked and are not that interesting, but painting them changes that status.
BP: And in a strange way, since your paintings look so real, they tend to feel more real— like they’re trying to tell me something.
CM: Yes, there is always a sense that there is an unexplained narrative. A painting like “The Lesson” has that, I think.
BP: Where do the titles from A Minor Place come from?
CM: A Minor Place comes from a Bonnie “Prince” Billie album. Again, it’s music that I was listening to at time; and the title was suggestive to me.
BP: And in regard to the specific pieces, are they references to songs as well?
CM: No. Either they are simply descriptive, or occasionally I will connect a song title [to the piece]. The title “The Association” was meant [to express that] in a way. Banal places or things can sometimes have a psychological association.
BP: Would it be safe to say that your pieces (in Chalet Town and A Minor Place) are meant to express emotion as much as—if not more than—to express a thought or idea?
CM: I was having a conversation with an artist recently, and I was talking about how I like the way the lens [can be] used in films or photographic sources to objectify the spaces in some way. But I think it is fair to say the spaces do have an emotional charge as well.
BP: Would you recommend people view your paintings to a soundtrack?
CM: Not really. What is interesting, though, is if people are familiar with a particular title, they may or may not form an association with that.
BP: Exactly; it was like that for me when I saw the piece “Day Sleeper.” I didn’t recognize that other paintings were referencing songs or albums, but I immediately thought of that song and how it makes me feel.
CM: “Day Sleeper” is probably the most well-known one, and I liked the idea of that character in the song. The painting has that dormitory atmosphere.
For more information visit ColinMartinArtist.com.