Daily Times

In Spain Marisa Martinez journey as an artist started since at a very young age while other girls may be playing with dolls, she was always doodling or drawing in any spare piece of paper she could find. Her art is a

gift from God. She was born with this blueprint, the most sincere expression of her soul, when she stands in from of a canvas she exposes her feelings to the full, letting go her imagination that sometimes may have surprised her greatly or scare to death. It all depends upon the circumstances around, the place and the environment which makes a lot of influence in the way she may express her feeling and what style may choose to deliver.

In addition, her art has served her in various areas of life as a healer, propelling self

esteem when she most needed in difficult times when her circumstances were not easy. She always dreamed to became a well known professional artist. She still has not lost hope that one day she may live from her art as a mainstream income however life has taught her to use it to serve others along the way. In 1989 she moved to London, in which she has been living ever since, virtually she has spent half of her life here. The major reason what she came to this metropolis was to develop both as a person and an artist.

Marisa Martinez’s artwork makes the invisible visible. Her paintings give us history, context, ideas, emotions, science, relationships, truth, beauty, values, morality, and our place in the universe

Marisa Martinez has been living in London for last twenty seven years. Almost half of her life life is spent in London and the city has had a strong influence on her work. As an artist she has always been a spectator and an observer of its inhabitants during different times of the day. Her art works vary according to how she feels, the situations may depict and intimate atmospheres, aspects of urban life, socialisation, reflect isolation or loneliness. She sometimes also refers to pressure, a suffocating feeling that goes on and on. Most of her art is created on a big terrace where she lives. Here she gets enough light, but above all fresh air, and the sounds of the leaves on the trees inspires her. It is a place full of romantic artistic atmosphere where she works and free her soul as she wishes. The technique she uses most is oil on canvas. She tends to prefer this medium because of the richness of the colours and the light effects that she can achieve with it. She feels more comfortable within, as it

comes naturally to her hands, allows to express feelings, what is inside her soul and

in the way she wants to execute it. In her recent artwork she has been more playful, working with collage techniques, making

strong feminist and political depictions about the woman being incharge of her own

body. They are witty and may be erotic in parts, strong metaphors of her own free expression, feeling liberated. She has also painted crowds on canvas, the latest one being ‘Rush Hour’ at London Bridge, a

station that she has travelled through frequently during the week lately. This is one of a series of images she has painted of crowds in London during rush hours a collective in which she takes part. These reflect the anguish the pressure felt, and the difficulty in finding space to breathe.

Her latest work has been influenced from what we are living at present, the coronavirus pandemic. Part of a series of coronavirus inspired paintings with a friendly multicultural message. Clinical masks create a distance between people, alienating the user, however the masks in her paintings give more friendly and different message.

Rush hour is a phenomenon that has always captured her attention. The behaviour of the

collective at this particular time of the day, moving like robotic figures with the same motions and in the same direction to work a human herd, not communicating with

each other, submitting to the interminable pressure and dictatorship of the hands of the clock. To represent rush hour, the crowds of figures are abstract, the strident colours on the canvas representing the feelings of pressure, the collective tension, having submitted to the rigidity of time, interminable masses of people, going in and out in a continuous motion as they try to get

from. Her painting depicts an intimate space which is cosy on the surface, however the people present are very distant from one another, which is reflected by the separation between the tables. The strong blue hues that dominate the painting are a metaphor for the feelings of loneliness we may feel when entering a social space if we are not going for a pre-arranged meet-up. Hence, the blue cafe is not a welcoming place in which to make friends another aspect of the great metropolis. We may walk into an intimate atmosphere hoping it might offer the possibility of finding someone new, a new friend or acquaintance, but then end up

walking home alone, just as we arrived.

Marisa’s latest work has been influenced from what we are living at present. Her paintings teach a lot about history, beliefs, convictions of the artist, roles of people in society, the human conditions. Marisa encourages, motivates, inspires and warns us through her spectacular paintings. Sometimes she depict her feelings and ideas in mythological way. What we glean from looking all depends on the lens with which we view the art. Some people only want to pay attention to the tricks one can use as an artist to fool the eye or the brain into seeing and thinking one sees a realistic appearance, or what in Greek is called mimesis from which we get mime and mimicking. By itself, such realism is not much more than pleasant illusions, a distraction from the cares of the real world but if harnessed to an attempt to comment on the nature of what the artist is depicting, the aforementioned realism of trick

groom loses it at the altar. For me if not for anyone else, painting teaches me to become more calm and peaceful because there is a lot that a painting communicates and one can also tell what was the artist thinking while drawing the masterpiece. During the completion of her superb work one can understand many different form of strokes, colors and skills that have been invested while the painting was put together. A painting drawn early in the morning will vary quite dramatically from that of drawn in the evening hours. As a writer I’m very much interested in her wonderful paintings. Her paintings teach us that reality can be viewed and interpreted in many different ways and, sometimes, that it is not only what we see. Marisa Martinez’s artwork makes the invisible visible. Her paintings give us history, context, ideas, emotions, science, relationships, truth, beauty, values, morality, and our place in the universe. She touches everything we know, hope for, believe and think, represents the best of who we are. She gives cultural expression of human identity in a marvelous manner.

The writer is book ambassador, columnist, political analyst and author of several books based in United Kingdom. He can be reached at naveedamankhan@hotmail.com