Keep Some Steady Friends Around

New Work by Martin Webb

Martin Webb's new exhibition, Keep Some Steady Friends Around, feels like a timely remedy in our hyper-political times. Webb uses acrylic and mixed media to explore themes of home, belonging, and connection, and our temporary place in the natural world. His works feature simplified images of places, people, plants, and animals, mixed with abstractions that create metaphors and ambiguity.

Near Green Mountain. Acrylic and Mixed Media on Wood Panel

Keep Some Steady Friends Around will include several large acrylic and mixed media paintings on wood panel and a series of smaller new works that Martin has been developing this year.  We're excited to work with Martin curating the works as this collection promises to be a visual balm in our crowded and hectic media world and even a protestation to our new political realities.

Martin Webb is an English-born and educated artist who adopted the Bay Area and has been busy making fine art and original work for gallery display alongside a robust resume of public works.  His Bridge Housing Mural is a 20 x 20 ft mural using reclaimed wood for the lobby of an affordable housing project at MacArthur Station in Oakland.

“My work examines universal themes of home, belonging, and connection, and our

transient place within the continuum of the natural world. These thoughts take shape in paintings that combine representations of places, people, plants and animals, layered with abstractions that embrace metaphor and ambiguity. Recurring motifs of boats, houses, and travelers, reflect on life’s journeys, arrivals, and moorings.

My studio is next to an urban farm, which feels like a space of optimism and renewal,

with the rhythms of planting and harvesting subtly shaping the images I produce. During the pandemic I started painting images of plants, often in vibrant colors - a coping strategy of defiantly creating some beauty amid the darkness.

My images often start from the memory of a certain scene or moment that really struck me. Usually it’s one that evokes a very specific time, place, or feeling. Sometimes I don’t necessarily understand why the image resonates so much, I just know that it does, and making the painting becomes a process of trying to understand

why.”

Martin's show Keep Some Steady Friends Around is up in the Nielsen Arts gallery. Please join the reception for Martin on Saturday, April 12th from 6:30-9pm.