Martha Holmes

Martha Holmes captures the essence of the Cornish coastline through abstract studies of colour and light. Her work is emotively charged by a deep connection to the ocean and it’s ever-changing influence on the landscape from which she paints.

Inspired by the Cornish masters - Heron, Hepworth, Nicholson, Scott - Martha's works in oil immerse the viewer in an emotional dialect, born from a deep-rooted connection to the land where she grew up.

Abstract in form, often with large flat areas of colour, Martha’s work captures a raw and honest sense of the landscape - her own experience communicated through colour and expressive mark making.

Over the past months, Martha’s work has shifted to exploring the hybrid between the exterior landscape and the interior of the studio, largely informed by two weeks spent in Studio 9 at Porthmeor earlier this summer. Noticing how the structures and layers in the studio - vessels, jugs of blooms, open artists books, existing paintings - paired with the organic forms of the landscape beyond, allowed new paintings with a different overall spatial dynamic to form.