Elyse Martin

My current work explores the possibility of making visual sense through a process that, though sometimes complex, turns out to be a kind of managed serendipity.

I create large abstracts, worked flat. I start with acrylic paint, beginning with colors in different areas, and manipulate the canvas until I find what works. The beginning is almost arbitrary, but what emerges is usually surprising.

I combine paint with a variety of textures-sometimes pouring medium, sometimes varnish, sometimes gels-to create surfaces that I embellish, remove, scrape, splatter or puddle.

Walking around the canvas as I work, I discover what perspective best suits the piece. Whether vertical, horizontal or angled, there is a struggle between disarray and harmony, comfort and discomfort that I strive to resolve in each piece, a process that can sometimes be completed through a minute detail or a disparate dash of color.

I hope to keep the viewer simultaneously engaged by the complexities within the work and soothed by the empty spaces between.