A Painter’s Dream…The Synergy Between Artist And Admirer

By Charles Woollett

Artists find their way into our hearts and minds with stories captured from their vivid experiences that are somehow relatable. Seared into our memories as if by some mutual alliance. 

In this case, William Martin brings his still life, portrait paintings, seascapes, and western images from his mind of imagination and the land of enchantment. Having lived in Taos, we can identify with the Native Indian and artist community there. Like Pueblo amigo, Standing Deer. Along with mutual artist friends, Ed Sandaval, Ann Houston, Bill Arms, John Farnsworth, and Agnus Martin (no relation). William is very much a part of the ‘hum’ that is all things art-related

in this tiny town in New Mexico.  Along with such notables of that legendary Art Colony, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Andrew Dashburg, D.H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Ansel Adams. 

William Martin was actually born in Mexico City, but left with his parents to move to California at the age of three. Mexico would tug at his heartstrings, as you will see.  But there were places to experience before he would return. Like selling pools in Cali at the age of eighteen, why? because he could draw. The artist within was lurking. Jump ahead to landing in Aspen, his party years, but also learning the trials and tribulations of being represented by agents and galleries as his painting techniques evolved and his reputation started to precede him. William, like so many artists here, appreciate the irresistible attraction, the magnet of San Miguel de Allende. He lived in Querétaro for a while, as he has family here in Mexico.

Light, shadow, and color are the keys to any artist's inspiration, and here in SMA they are in abundance. As he says, “It was back in 2005 when I arrived in SMA, and that love affair began”. He met his wife, Rae Miller, a distinguished artist in her own right, some two years later in Berlin, not Germany, but with a friend in that bar's namesake here in town. They danced the dance, finally falling head over heels for one another, and as they say, the rest is history. 

Bounce back to Taos, both painting and living their laid-back Southwest lifestyle. Eventually, moving Rae’s mother from Arizona. Then that Mexican tug began again. So they ultimately decided to move back here to San Miguel, five months ago, bringing  Mom with them. It felt easy, natural, it felt like the perfect time to be back in Mexico.

William Martin took up oil painting in Los Angeles at the age of twenty - it was something innate. Through more than forty years of experience passionately portraying the beauty surrounding him or locked deep within his artistic mind. One can’t wait to see what his new escapades here in Mexico will reveal. Rae and William opened their M&M studio last month, just behind Lavinia’s Framing, Calzada de La Estacion 151. This is their true passion, teaching students of all ages how to paint. 

Martin’s work has been shown in Aspen, Beverley Hills, Carmel, Palm Springs, and here in San Miguel de Allende. His collectors are found around the world. When not painting, he enjoys playing blues harmonica, guitar, and reminiscing about that unforgettable road trip. He and his Iron Maiden, an Avocado Green 356 Porsche and compadre, Jim Medicino, with only a hundred dollars each in their pockets, drove the trip of a lifetime, from LA to Mexico City.

An adventurer at heart with a limitless discovery for the unknown. Naturally, he's studied the classic painters of old. He even once meticulously copied a Rembrandt. A ‘moving man’, of all people, stopped dead in his tracks and almost dropped the sofa, exclaimed, “You own a Rembrandt?” much to the laughter by Rae and William…if only. Admirers come from all walks of life.

Leonard da Vinci once said, “Where the Spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art”. William Martin’s spirit and hand are very much one. Wherever life has taken him throughout his travels, he is a master painter as he vacillates between whatever form or genre strikes him that day. Recently, he said as we chatted over dinner, “I have lived a long and sometimes hard life, but always a fun one. I don't have regrets, it's living in the present, and what's next, that excites me”. The synergy between artist and admirer, do I dare say, is this painter's dream come true. 

www.williammartinfineart.com martinoils@icloud.com