Paul Martinson

An abiding interest in the surreal and the symbolic has seen Paul Martinson (b.1956 Aotearoa New Zealand) shift away from realism in search of a style that expresses the poetry of the human mind. While retaining a drawing-based figurative style, Martinson has embraced a personal, liberal approach to painting that allows a free flow of imagery and ideas.

Martinson’s compositions are surreal and poetic; a bird in flight within a closed glass jar, a fish swimming in a water-filled light bulb. Where human figures appear, they are rendered as archetypal forms—faceless, marble-skinned Venus figures in sensuous, surreal contexts. The artist’s works are both poetic and troubling. They span subliminal and liminal realms with effortless agility. References to the known world are complicated with nonsensical paradigms. The lyrical is rendered in unexpected juxtapositions, and a transcendent reality is presented, beyond biological classifications.

Despite the delicate, meticulous handling of surface treatment and the soft gradation of subtle hues, it is as though Martinson is trying to get “behind the scenes” of life itself. What makes a fish, a fish? How does a fish relate to a light-bulb? These types of questions, although ridiculous on first reading, reveal a quest for epistemological knowledge, that is to say an appetite for the knowledge of knowledge itself. Martinson boasts a career as a research technician, committed to the science of nature, he asks questions to explain connections between seemingly disparate incidents of vitalism. Reflecting upon his time in the 1980s, whilst assisting the eminent Dr Neville Grace in his studies of Ruminant Mineral Metabolism, Martinson explains, “people talk about animals and humans as somehow separate; as if we aren’t animals. To me there is no distinction whatsoever and never has been, but my time back in the ‘80s made this idea indelible and all-consuming to express visually.”

Martinson’s works are held in the collections of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Pōneke Wellington; Waikato Museum of Art and History, Kirikiriroa Hamilton; and Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History, Wairarapa.

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