front&center: Edwin Martin

TRI-LAKES AREA — For Edwin Martin, the concept of retirement hasn’t changed his life all that much.

“When it comes to retirement, the only thing different today is that I don’t have to get up at a certain time. The artwork remains the same,” Martin said. He paused before adding, “Well, today I have more time for work, but maybe less energy.”

Martin, an art professor who retired from Henderson State University in 2007, has an exhibition titled “New Work” open at the Russell Fine Arts Center Gallery at HSU in Arkadelphia until Tuesday, Dec. 1.

The collection of colorful paintings using a variety of materials reflects the work Martin has done since his retirement. Martin said the end of his regular teaching career just gives him more time for his work.

There seems to be no lack of energy in the number of paintings on display at the gallery, nor in the bright colors and the life expressed in the paintings.

New to his art is the paper he uses instead of the usual canvas for his work.

“Now I use more paper that I make myself from natural fibers,” Martin said.

On display in the exhibit are samples of the paper he manufacturers using corn shucks, bananas, palmetto, yucca, tomato and other plants. One painting is of a dandelion growing at the water’s edge. The paper is made from dandelion fibers.

“I am working on some okra paper now for a similar work,” Martin said.

He also treats the paper with oils and other liquids, creating patterns and swirls, much like the flyleaves of old books.

“Sometimes, the oils work through the painting and become part of the work where it wasn’t intended,” Martin said. “But that is natural and it’s good, too.”

Where he once used oils, Martin now mainly uses casein, a milk-based paint that dates back to the ancient Egyptians.

“Unlike watercolors, when the paint dries you can paint over it like you can with oil paints,” Martin explained.

This ancient paint also allows him to use techniques used by painters in the Renaissance.

“You can also varnish over the casein, which gives it depth,” Martin said. “Then you can glaze it with oils that enrich the colors.”

The subject matter of the paintings include memories of his mother and portraits of Martin and his two older brothers. They are matched with older versions of themselves based on photos taken when his brothers were serving in the armed forces in World War II and one of himself as a young art teacher in the 1960s.

Also featured are paintings of tropical birds in jungle

settings based on his childhood along Bayou Tech in

southern Louisiana.

“I never saw parrots there of course, but a lot of the

plants and the waterways I paint are like those in the bayou

where I was raised,” he said.

The water, wildlife and culture of the bayou country

are reflected in Martin’s latest work, perhaps to a greater

extent than ever before, he said. Even after time in Florida

and living in Arkadelphia for more than 40 years, his voice

still carries a hint of his childhood in Cajun country.

He was born in St. Martinville, La., the youngest of

nine children. Martin said you made your own fun and

playthings growing up in and around the big family home

on the bayou.

“I would draw or I wanted to make things, to con

struct them, like toys and boats,” he said. “I guess I had

this childlike desire to manipulate materials and I had a

knack for it.” Martin said that the first artists he saw were drawing

pictures for tourists of New Orleans when an older sister

took him to the city for the first time.

“I got some pastels and I was drawing pictures of my

friends and whoever wanted them,” he said. “I then ordered

some oil paints from the Sears catalogue. It had six colors,

and I learned you could mix them to make other colors and

the rest - is my life.” With the encouragement of another sister, Martin stud

ied art at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now

called the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. While taking

classes he took student jobs, and in his senior year he was

working for the head of the art department as a teaching

assistant. These jobs usually included grading papers and

running errands for the professor, and Martin expected to

occasionally get an opportunity to instruct a class.

“On the first day of the term, the professor introducedhimself to the class and explained that as the head of the department he was often called away and his teaching assistant, me, would take the class on those occasions,” Martin remembered. “He then looked at his watch and turned the class over to the 20-year-old senior and was never in the classroom again.”

At graduation, that department head made Martin an official professor, and he remained a teacher until his retirement from HSU.

“It is hard to make a living as an artist, and if you can’t do that, being a teacher is the best way to go,” Martin said. “You are around art and artists every day and you can help them see their visions while you work on yours.”

In art school in the 1950s, Martin trained as an abstract impressionist, but he changed with the times.

“By the ’60s, the abstract movement was finished, they had made their statement,” Martin said. “A lot moved way from abstracts and with my background in painting from life, I returned to realism.”

His eye for detail and ability to paint realistically provided him with an opportunity to use his art in the theater. In high school he began painting sets for school plays and continued to do that in college and beyond.

“I painted sets while studying at college,” Martin said. “Working on my master’s degree I took theater scene design, and I have worked on scenery for productions at Henderson and for the plays and operas in Little Rock.”

It was this link with theater that lead him to a connection that always draws questions when he mentions it.

“I worked on my master’s degree in fine arts at Florida State Universit y, a nd my roommate was Jim Morrison,” Martin said.

He shared a room with the young theater student who became the tragic rock music icon.

“He was very intelligent and ver y well read, much more than the rest of us. He worked with a guy who filmed the Homecoming Parades and other school activities,” Martin said. “It was the ’60s and we were artists and students. He was no wilder than the rest of us.”

He lost touch with Morrison long before Morrison became the rock star poet of “Light My Fire.” Morrisonheaded to film school, and Martin continued his teaching career.

“I heard from a friend in California that he had gotten a band together,” Martin said. “I didn’t know he could sing.”

Martin earned the first Master of Fine Arts degree awarded at Florida State and taught two years in south Florida before finding a home in Arkadelphia and Henderson State University in 1967. He spent 16 of those 30 years as chairman of the art department, then stepped down to concentrate on his teaching and his art.

After retirement in 2007, heremains as professor emeritus. His works are on display in the fine arts building on campus Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- wbryan@ arkansasonline.commatter of

factBirthday: Jan. 3, 1941 Occupation: I always earned a living as a teacher Family includes: Wife Wanda, daughters Elaine and Valerie I could not live without: My art When I was young I wanted to: Be an artist or sail around the world My favorite color is: A warm yellow, like the glow of a lamp light

Tri-Lakes, Pages 136 on 11/15/2009

Print Headline: front&center Edwin Martin