James Martin: Riding The Moon Train

Deceptively like folk art, the art of James Martin is deeply informed by literature, geography, art history and natural history. Having studied writing at the University of Washington, Martin developed his comic painting style in isolation at his Main Street cabin in Edmonds, Washington. Since his 1955 debut at the Seattle Art Museum,Martin has been an eccentric satellite of the Northwest School of artists, sharing their allusions to nature and animals, but replacing their spiritual pretensions with references to Shakespeare, Proust and others.