Lizzy Martinez

Summer

Mixed media on paper

From the "World in Crisis" Series.

"Martinez's figures often find themselves in volatile environments with aspects of a stretched reality permeating with symbols and displaying stories apart from viewers' typical expectations. A sense of place may develop through the found agriculture, architecture, and animal or insect species of the region. Increasingly her exhibitions transpose more traditional media of painting and drawing by coupling presentations in sound, installation, fiber arts, and video or animation montages. Within these dramatized nature and history scapes lurk totems and pookas which allude to the artist’s feminist and Latinx social concerns."

– Lizzy Martinez

About the artist

Lizzy Martinez

Having exhibited in the Midwest, New England, and Ireland, Lizzy Martinez is a figurative, Latina artist currently based in St. Louis, an alumnus of Boston University and the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in Canada for outstanding work in figurative art among on an international scale and a Brand Boeshaar awardee, two-time recipient of the Regional Arts Commission Opportunity Grantee, the winner Constantin Alajalov Fund, and was awarded funding by the Andy Warhol Foundation and Cerf+ in 2020 among other distinctions.

In 2018, Martinez had a one-woman show at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis that delved into the costs of gun violence as well as her loss entitled, Seeing Red. She has also shown at Springfield Museum of Art, Danforth Museum of Art, Mitchell Museum, and the Figge Art Museum. She is increasingly concerned with finding new ways to engage social politics butting against the
perceptions of time and history regarding the plights of women.

She has benefited from the creative space of residencies that push her work forward twice at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Crosstown Arts, twice at Paul Artspace, Otis College of Art and Design, and Soaring Gardens. Her practice speaks out on social issues and appears in the public realm to not merely showcase her artist’s craft but also incite change and difficult conversations.

Martinez often focuses on women's roles in terms that have been traditionally seen as taboo to question the borders of figurative art and content prescribed by a largely conservative-leaning art world in regards to artists who happen to be female to challenge prescribed roles and incite better inclusivity and who has access to storytelling and an assurance of safety both in the real world and in creative spaces.