Tom Martin: Everything and Nothing

Painter Tom Martin’s sharply executed realist work is created without the use of photographic source material, a choice he makes so that his paintings resemble life and reality, not photography. He paints so that the viewer will enter the painting. In this series of work, Martin focuses on money and the effect it has on the global population. For some, money is everything; to others, nothing.

Martin is a realist painter based in London. Since finishing his studies in 2008, he has regularly exhibited work in London, New York, Melbourne, and Montreal. Martin is the winner of the Exhibition Award from FWMoA’s Contemporary Realism Biennial 2014. This is the first museum exhibition of Martin’s in the United States.

From the artist:
“My work explores the role money plays in various fractions of life, such as the economy, conflict, religion or personality.

Though my work is most commonly associated with the label “˜Hyperrealism’, I prefer not to think of it as such. For those reasons my world is now absent of the restraints photography possesses, such as distortion, blurring or over exposure. In order to achieve this, my paintings are made with reference to multiple sources, drawing together a mass of information that can be used or discarded where necessary. I want the viewer to feel they can enter the painting and move around it. In parts I aim for the subject to appear as though it projects further than the plane of the canvas, to have a presence, putting the viewer somewhere in the physical experience of the painting.”