|
|
 |
Home | Contacts | Directions | Sponsors | About Temple | Press Release
Featured Temple Artists
|
VICTORIA MARTINEZ-RODGERS
Victoria Martinez-Rodgers is an avid, competitive tennis player who radiates a physical energy that is likewise expressed in her work. Descended from one of New Mexico’s oldest families as well as French and Irish ancestors, Victoria and her husband, Clarence Rodgers, who is from a pioneer Anglo family, make their home in an enclave in Albuquerque’s South Valley, surrounded on all sides by relatives From her upstairs studio windows, she has a panoramic view of the Rio Grande and Sandia Mountains.
Rodgers leads a life of numerous obligations, all fulfilled. Her family comes first, as it does for so many women. She has raised three children to adulthood-both daughters are artists-and is now a loving grandmother; but, she did not wait to develop her own talents. Married soon after high school and a mother soon after marriage, she found her treachers in the Albuquerque community. ON discovering the classes of Reinord Whitt-Prichette, she became his apprentice for four years and followed a practice not unlike that of the old European guilds by studying in the studio of an accomplished artist-teacher.
From Whitt-Prichette, she learned discipline, drawing and precise techniques of color missing; nevertheless, Rodgers continuously teaches herself through prodigious self-critique. Since the 1970s, she has been a recognized New Mexico painter and award winner.
MEDIUM: Paintings: Oil
PRICE RANGE OF EXHIBIT ARTWORK: $3,000 to $5,000
ARTIST STYLE
Victoria Martinez-Rodgers is a painter of light and wind and fleeting moments. Her characteristic brushstrokes have the integrity of discrete marks. She lays numerous deliberately shaped strokes of related hues over an unlikely color of unde rpainting – like a hot pint, blue-violet or even a bright yellow-that shows through in the interstices between strokes.
She admits these under layers can be “horrendous” to work against. She says, “I have no choice but to follow my intuition…the rewards can provide some really scintillating effects. The initial tone sets the aura of the painting-it literally becomes the life-blood of the subject matter.”
At a close range, Rodgers’ paintings reveal an atomization of color, but from a distance they have a unity. An illusion of form derives from her control of complementary colors in the build-up of brushstrokes, which are worked on the diagonal from the block-in stage through several layers.
The artist reads the Bible before painting. This fruitful ritual has been the mainspring of several garden paintings. Biblical imagery reinforces her sense that a heavenly presence inhabits gardens.
EXHIBITIONS:
National Hispanic Cultural Center
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS:
Limited editions at Indiana Dartmouth Street Gallery, New Mexico
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Traveling has yielded insights that affect Rodger’s visionary viewpoint. “I do quick sketches, take slides for reference, collect books, but most of all, I just use my memory When there’s a particular scene I want to envision, I take in the view, close my eyes and breathe it in just as it is, making note of sight, color, sound, smell and whatever else appears. It works much like a video camera, only easier to transport. I file the moment away but I keep bringing it back at quiet intervals during the day or before I go to sleep. As I paint, I feel as if my physical presence is more in the place I am painting than in my studio.”
“In my present style, I’m able to paint much more loosely, spontaneously and confidently. Whatever shapes or spirits reveal themselves, I let them do so.”
|
|
Artwork for Sale
at Festival
(click to enlarge)
|
© Temple Arts Festival, 2005
Congregation Ohabai Sholom
5015 Harding Rd.
Nashville, TN 37205
615-352-7620
taf@templenashville.org
site by Braden Fleischer
|
|
|
