Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

The boyfriend and I both have several pieces by Chicago artist Naomi Martinez. Her new website just went live so please browse around if you can.

Her work often has a fanciful, urban-adventurous quality. They capture city life at magical times.

She says she’s inspired by Japanese animation, and I think you can see that. In both the European and Japanese traditions though, magical creature are connected with nature. They appear in art and illustrations of woodland scenes. Sometimes they are the physical manifestations of nature’s souls. (fairies, Princess Mononoke, etc.)

In her art, Martinez’s monsters are urban creatures. They accompany urban girls. The pair often appear in natural settings with trees, flowers, and rolling hills, but these patches of nature are still urban ones. Fences and background buildings say it to be so.

These paintings seem to tell about unwritten folktales. Whereas Hansel and Gretel, Peter of Peter and the Wolf, and even Hester Prynne left society and entered the wild forests to meet their adventures, Martinez’s girl and monster find those elements within today’s sprawling cities.

There’s a quiet and a stillness within the scenes that make them feel a world apart. There’s an isolation that reflects what many of us want when we enter our imaginations. The artworks show that within the noise and aggressive energies of urban life, there are moments and glimmers of fancy and magic. You just have to be open to them.

Tags: Art //