Like his friend and fellow contributor to the Paintopolis group blog, Kevin Turcotte, (who has continued to add nice small paintings to that blog since my post last week), James Martin works in the animation industry.
Martin works for Dreamworks, but aside from that I can find little information about him or his professional work.
What I did find on his blog, James Martin Studio, is lots of fresh, bright, quickly realized small oils of subject matter in Souther California, presumably near where he lives or works.
Like Turcotte, he describes several of his small (often 8×6) oils as “lunchtime sketches”; which, if you think about it, is a great way to mark off a little time to paint every day.
His blog posts also include some more fully realized works, figure paintings and interior studies. All of them though, are direct, painterly and nicely unfussed-with.
Impressionism lives! The funny thing is that the sunlight on the left is so bright and intense that when I look at it it doesn’t seem impressionistic anymore, it seems awfully real.
Incredible painting skills!!
James is a real natutal when it comes to making anything into art. I’m known for that to, but it’s not true. I work at home everyday and still havn’t painted in my back yard.