Jessica Frances Martin
Wildflower
Opening April 28

Slow Dance is excited to present “Wildflower,” an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Phoenix-based artist Jessica Frances Martin. The exhibition is on view from April 28th - June 9th, 2024, with an opening reception on Sunday, April 28th, from 2-5pm.

Deceptively serene in setting and composition, strange currents run stir the surface of Martin’s work, like the change in air pressure before a storm. Think of a rock or a mound of dirt. Lift the rock and beneath it is earth teeming with insects, lizards, worms: all manner of creeping life. Within the mound of dirt are tunnels and chambers, throne rooms for queen ants, passageways and burrows. Within Martin’s painted scenes, there are hidden pockets of life and mystery, ecosystems of real and slightly fantastical life forms—pastiches of past and present—intertwined in uncanny worlds.  

 Although the female figures in Martin’s paintings are reminiscent of paper dolls or stiffly posed fashion models in vintage pattern catalogues, the settings in which they’re situated suggest an interplay between inner and outer landscapes—lending these figures the mysteries of private, interior lives and fantasies. They are not dictated to or performed upon, and they—in turn—are not performing for a particular audience. They are located more-so within a mood, an emotion (like the sensation brought on by a particular song), or within an impossible-to-articulate fantasy than they are existing in a “place.” In this way, Martin’s figures are provided a sort of freedom and unknowable distance, existing within fictive spaces where their characterizations range from naïve to formidable to boldly reveling in pleasure and play.

 The membranes are thin in Martin’s work between real and fantasy, between comfort and something a little bit sinister, and between the visible and unseen. The figures balance awkwardness with self-assurance. Martin often magnifies moments in her paintings, employing techniques adapted from science illustrations for children, wherein small image bubbles depict minute details that exist in the “space” of the painting, but would not be otherwise visible to us. Insects, frogs, tadpoles, and salamanders crop up, and as the scenery and creatures envelop the central figures of each painting, it is as though the scenery is as much within the figures as it is outside of them. They are, in some ways, straddling both a sort of dreamscape and a tangible present, embedded within ecosystems and cycles of life. All around Martin’s figures, things are breeding, blooming, swimming, and taking flight.

 Artist’s Bio

Jessica Frances Martin (b. 1987 Phoenix, AZ US) lives and works in Phoenix, AZ. Martin holds an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Martin considers the borders between women’s inner and outer worlds. Her images are interior/ exterior explorations, playing with the boundaries between real world, fantasy, and fiction. Other themes in her work include bonds with animals, women engaged in leisure, play, and explorations of nature. Exhibitions include LUSH, Hashimoto Contemporary, New York NY; Ordinary Instant, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York; Ground Floor 2020, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Floating, Ballroom Projects, Chicago (solo).