Local artist/musician extraordinaire exhibiting on Hill

Posted 2/24/17

Bartender, musician and painter Henry Martin currently has a show of his latest paintings at Borrelli's Chestnut Hill Gallery. by Len Lear If I saw Henry Martin’s work on display at the …

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Local artist/musician extraordinaire exhibiting on Hill

Posted

Bartender, musician and painter Henry Martin currently has a show of his latest paintings at Borrelli's Chestnut Hill Gallery.

by Len Lear

If I saw Henry Martin’s work on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I would not be surprised. It is simply gorgeous. Martin, 53, of Mt. Airy, who is also a talented musician, currently has an exhibit of his stunning work on display at Borrelli’s Chestnut Hill Gallery, One E. Gravers Lane, through March 1.

You might say that Martin is the Rembrandt of Chestnut Hill. When you see his oil paintings of local landmarks like the trees in Pastorius Park and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, St. Martin's Station, Bredenbeck’s and the Wissahickon covered bridge, you feel that you can reach out and touch them, and the trees and buildings will come to life.

Martin’s local scenes are painted plein air, on the spot. “My style of painting is atmospheric naturalism,” Martin explained last week. “I want the viewer to be able to feel the air in the painting, through a strong sense of depth. As a director lights a stage, I light my paintings with an idea that the objects in the paintings become palpable in 3-D, as if these objects emerge from the paintings themselves.”

Martin, who was also a server/bartender at Tavern on the Hill in 2011 and 2012, currently works with Paintnite, which hosts painting events at area bars and restaurants. And as talented as Martin is as an artist, he is just as talented as a musician and writer of more than 150 songs. He made a terrific album a few years ago, “Blame it on Rock and Roll,” and has a new CD that is finished but has not yet been mastered. He both paints and records with David Cope, a popular Chestnut Hill singer/songwriter.

“My music tastes are old school,” he said. “My own favorite musician is Tom Waits, and my musical style is ‘Jim Morrison meets the Band’ … When I actually design a song, it’s much like the way I put a painting together,” said Martin, reflecting on how the two different art forms can contribute to each other. It is a process of seeing parts of a song and how they come together, the way a painting is made of different parts.

Born in North Carolina, Martin came to Philadelphia in 1986 to attend the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). He enrolled in a program that coordinated with the University of Pennsylvania and earned his bachelor’s in fine arts from Penn in 1994, where he graduated cum laude. After graduation, he lived in Madrid, where he was commissioned to do a painting for the King of Morocco, Hassan II. He returned to the states in 1998 and “set up shop as an artist” in Philly.

Martin’s works are in many significant private collections, alongside painters such as Edward Willis Redfield, Gilbert Stuart, Kathe Kollwitz and Anselm Kiefer. A short list of his own artistic heroes includes Goya, Thomas Eakins, George Inness and the Pennsylvania Impressionists.

Martin once wrote in a blog that “Genius runs in my family, as I am forged; born within frontier types, tinctured with an elixir of Victorian sophistication, and equally tinctured with an aspiration toward innocence: wildly American and wildly independent. And by the way, loud.”

The acclaimed artist has quite an illustrious family history in the arts. Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the legendary “Battle Hymn of the Republic” right after the outbreak of the Civil War is 1861, is Henry’s great-great-great aunt on his mother’s side. His mother, Marilee Chadeayne, who passed away three years ago, was a brilliant jazz pianist.

And her grandmother, Lauretta Bottomer, was an opera singer in Paris. On the other side, his father, Carroll Martin, was “a painter of no real recognition but great talent,” and his great-uncle is the late Robert Chadeayne, an American regionalist who went to the famed Art Students League with Alexander Calder.

Martin’s current show has several landscape paintings, but Martin is now beginning work on a new series, an homage to Eakins' "Gross Clinic" as a reference to Goya's “Black Paintings.” Thematically this series represents a complete departure from the artist’s current work.

Martin, who resides in Mt. Airy with wife, Anna Mikhailova, and daughter, Elizabeth, 7, was asked about his idea of perfect happiness? “I have never seen this in an individual,” he said. “I have no idea what it looks like. Engagement and connectedness seem to be the greatest indicators of happiness. It is the connectedness that is important, not the happiness.”

The local artist, whose heroes in real life are Winston Churchill, John Wesley Powell (an explorer of the American West), “Gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson, the Roman Emperor Hadrian and former President Obama, would love to host and instruct outdoor painting tours if he could have any job in the world.

If he could live anywhere, Martin would choose Northern Spain, near the mountains and the sea. He says his biggest pet peeve is “letting other people form your opinions.” In the fall Martin will be teaching a class at Morris Arboretum titled "The Majesty of Trees." If you see his tree paintings, you’ll know why.

For more information about the Borrelli exhibit, call 215-248-2549 or visit www.chestnuthillgallery.com. You can reach Martin at 215-313-1963 or www.henrycmartin.com. You can contact Len Lear at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com

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