Executed in 2016, Bay Area showcases Eddie Martinez’s vigorous celebration of colour, gestural form and layered application of media on a monumental scale. Inspired by organic shapes as well as the immediacy of graffiti applied directly onto walls, Martinez’s use of silkscreen ink, oil, enamel and spray paint in the present work creates a sense of raw disorder, full of velocity, which in turn imbues the work with a new visual lexicon. Dancing across the expansive sky blue of the background, Martinez’s forms weave and collide with each other, vibrating in the automatism of their daubed application. The artist’s expressive mark-marking resonates with our subjective relationships to the world, urging us to recall our personal experiences and memories. In Bay Area, Martinez chooses to avoid figurative forms, instead conjuring the light, air and water of the titular bay through an associative dynamic collection of colours and forms.
The present work is expansive in its scale, exemplifying the horizon of a coastline where the sea meets the sky. Sky blue planes insect and blend with cornflower blue brushstrokes, while pockets of colour swim and drift seemingly on the surface. At once we could be observing a bay from an aerial view as well as looking out onto the vista of the coast. Black lines and dots punctuate the composition, perhaps indicating man-made elements against the landscape. From above we could be looking down on the boats and buildings of the coastline or the hubbub of the city intersecting with the sea. Evoking the ebb and flow of wind and water, the forms seem to float to the upper right through Martinez’s adroit conjuring of the fresh sea breeze.
Drawing upon differing artistic techniques, Martinez spent his adolescent years tagging graffiti. Continuing a dialogue with Abstract Expressionism through his immediate application of form and colour, alongside his use of considered yet wandering automatic lines, the viewer is reminded of Willem de Kooning’s weaving brushstrokes and Joan Miró’s surreal scenes. The artist once expressed, ‘I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to think anything. I don’t have anything in particular in the work I want people to see, I want it all to be interpreted’ (Eddie Martinez, quoted in Kate Tiernan, ‘Eddie Martinez: “I just want people to interpret the work how they want,”' Studio International¸ 20 April 2014, online). Through a truly intuitive and unique application of paint and line, Martinez creates scenes of both chaos and wonder.