The Next Brushstroke

Here are some excerpts and photos that I have put together from Martha Rock Keller's talk about her work in her exhibit The Next Brushstroke. The talk was held at the gallery at 2 pm Sunday December 7, 2008 (full disclosure -- I am one of Martha's ardent fans, and a co-owner of WSG Gallery along with 15 other artists).






Martha Rock Keller






Martha was inspired by Rainer Marie Rilke's poem Entrance:

With your eyes ...
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky, slender, alone
And you have made the world. And it is huge ...

White Pine, Lake Michigan Bluff

Paraphrased from the artist's own words:

"Three things of importance in my work:

1. I look at my painting as rebirth, as mirror and window, as an exploration and investigation of the known and unknown.
2. I like to see passion in the paint.
3. I often reach visual bliss -- an intensity that recharges what I see everyday.

One of Martha's great brushes

1. I want my painting to be a love letter to existence, to the world of nature and ideas...I love to read art books in the Ann Arbor Public Library and write about art in my journal..words and images are intertwined.. Preparation for painting: reading the New York Times, music, walking in the Arboretum, breathing, mindfulness,...feeling available energy..choosing the brush and paint...One brush or 15 or 50? Light! Weather!!...









Perspectives on perspective: all is relative -- light, surface of canvas, atmospheric pressure, homeostasis, organic adjustments, a painting is a live thing, changing, adapting ... I can change light to dark, bright to dull ... Radiance. Vitality. A lesson in awareness.

Black Spruce I, Lake Michigan Bluff

Martha at work












2. quote by Van Gogh in The Creative Process, Ghiselin, p.46: 'I draw repeatedly 'til there is one drawing that is different from the rest ... more typical and with more feeling and life.'


Young Evergreen II








3. Arriving at visual bliss through long narrative lines and variation within repetition, and constant contact with the canvas or paper. Sensing sensitivity and emotion with the motion of the brush and through subtle repetitive nuance and variety of marks.

Martha with her sketchbook at her talk

Art as life experience re-interpreted: the life force that reverberates through all the ideas that generate a work of art, beginning with the materials and the look they supply.

















Black Spruce II, next to Large Spruce, both Lake Michigan Bluff, as hung in the gallery, side by side







The design builds on basic frameworks referring to our sense of gravity (horizontal and vertical structure lines/directions) and is based on perspective and the science of how we see things.





Ice Floes










Beyond that, the artist lends love, the emotional edge, the spirit of the piece."

-- Martha Rock Keller

Martha's sketchbooks and brushes


To see more of Martha's work in this show, please go to www.wsg-art.com. Then navigate to Martha's exhibit, November 2008 (either by clicking Current Exhibits, or Previous Exhibits)





Submitted by Michelle A. Hegyi
Photos of Martha's talk by Michelle A. Hegyi