Visual Artist Brings Sublime Beauty To Ordinary Things

A relevant artist in today’s world of contemporary art, one Filipino-Latino American is bringing his art for view and sale via  New Image Art Gallery back to the Bay Area through Art Silicon Valley/San Francisco (Art SV/SF), the international contemporary and modern art fair coming to the San Mateo County Event Center  on Oct. 8-11. As the Pacific Rim’s premier, West Coast art fair, Art SV/SF brings together more than 50 art galleries and 400 artists from around the globe.

Patrick Martinez, “lovely spread” (you can’t see me), Ceramic, Plex and Neon 2015 ©New Image Art Gallery

Patrick Martinez is a Los Angeles-based artist known to focus on the phenomenology of his surroundings, in which he brings sublime beauty to things that are not thought as conventionally beautiful.  For example, he uses subject matter such as everyday people that aren’t usually painted into the limelight and elements of the city that would be thought of as objects we take for granted.

His work composes impressionistic painting techniques and ceramic sculpture with neon light elements inspired by signage found throughout the Los Angeles area.

Martinez’s burgeoning popularity as an urban artist is evident as his work has been exhibited all over the U.S. from ‘Most Oddinism’ (a group show at Art Basel in Miami) to the Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco. As a true millennial, Martinez utilizes his social media platforms to gain a loyal following beyond the predictable art world – like his 17,000 Instagram followers.

Since the days of his childhood he was always drawing or scribbling on something. In his teenage years in the early 90’s, he was introduced to Hip Hop culture and exclusively to one of its elements, graffiti, which remains an huge influence in his work. In 1994 he attended Pasadena High School Visual Arts and Design Academy, where he learned and practiced his image-making skills.

Martinez continued at Pasadena City College (PCC), where he spent three years experimenting and developing his artistic skills. He kept a steady career doing illustrations and design work mainly for underground and mainstream record labels that catered to the Hip Hop community. In 2001, he was ready to take on the next stage of art discipline. This led him to apply to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.