Eddie Martinez is hands down one of the best artists working today. I’m not even going to qualify it by saying he’s one of my favorite artists, he’s a lot of artists’ favorite artist. For visual people, being in front of Martinez’s work is like sitting down to a dinner where the food is so delicious you forget to say anything to each other. If you count visual as a sense, it’s sensual. I was very happy to get to visit his studio and report back to Beautiful/Decay with the goods. Eddie had a big stack of drawings which had not been photographed before. As I flipped through that rich pile of drawings my brain melted and the hair on my arms stood up. So take a moment, picture your spirit animal, relax and enjoy this. I feel like Morpheus, and you’re Neo, in that scene from the Matrix where Neo has to choose between the red pill and the blue pill. Once you’ve seen things through Eddie’s eyes you can’t go back.
“It can come out in a doodle. If I see something I like, I keep using it. Keep working a visual idea out until it’s exhausted.”
Eddie had a sweet framed Brian Belott drawing.
“You know how Picasso could paint things in 100 different ways? I like that.”
“When you work with the same image over and over again, you teach yourself what you like to see.”
These paintings are all in various stages of progress, some are just getting started and some are finished.
“I spit at these things and cut them with knives. It’s the truest way for me to express myself. It’s so physical and seems so emotional. Not to say it’s a more real way of doing something. I didn’t look at these paintings and say – that’s what I want to do.”
