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Artist Exhibitions:
Selected Exhibitions
1999
September: The Loggia Gallery,
Fourth and Second
Presbyterian Church, "With
Many Voices-A Celebration of
Cultural Diversity," Chicago.
Frick Center Founder Gallery,
"Mirrors, Michele Tuohey and
Oscar Martinez" Elmhurst
College, Elmhurst, Illinois
March: UCE Foyer Art Exhibits
Gallery, Unitarian Church of
Evanston, Illinois
1998
June: Earth Works ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
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Artist Reviews:
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Collections:
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Commissions:
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Artist Statement for Oscar Martinez
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The place where we are born and grow up has an attraction and a mystic effect on our psyche and souls. Even if one chooses not to go back home the choice in itself is subject to the knowledge that there is a home to go back to. Being able to make that choice gives one peace, a sense of belonging and refuge. Home to me is Maraguez. My memories of this place are still with me. In my paintings I attempt to capture a bit of Maraguez full of folklore, myth, spirituality and beauty.
Maraguez gave way to a dam and is now under water. It has returned to the womb of nature and someday it will be born again. In the meantime I cannot return home. Now it lives in my memories, soul and my heart. I can only remember the sound of the trees being caressed by the tropical winds and disrupting the night's eternal silence. Our house, surrounded by mountains and dense vegetation, become a stage dressed in the glitter of shining stars in the pitch black sky. My grandfather's violin accompanies the melody of the river flowing in our backyard; my grandmother sings nature's mystical performance that breathes life into our family. In the morning, the silence of this tropical stage is broken by the calling of roosters, hailing life and death, dawn and dusk which are symbols of home.
The absence of home only enhances the images, the colors, the sounds. My paintings unfold the mysteries of life's duality and influences of eras embedded in shared traditions. Time and spiritual awareness become poetic metaphors for rhythm and movement, and the stories which end up as painted images reveal time's effect on my perceptions of realty and myself.
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