In the 16 years since Christopher signed and sold his first painting, he has become as masterful at exhibiting his work as he is at creating it, successfully launching two large Dallas galleries
a Los Angeles gallery, and now a gallery in Aspen. With multiple dealer relationships across the country and gallery representation including San Francisco, Laguna Beach, Houston, and Los Angeles his work has now spread globally to corporate collections from Bermuda to Hong Kong. What sets him apart is a style as fluid and changing as the organic compositions he creates. Year after year his clients return adding more pieces to their individual collections.

The spectrum of Chris’s private and corporate collectors runs the gamut from former President George Bush Sr., who was given one of Chris’ 9-11 flags as the recipient of the Joseph Prize, firms such as Deloitte and Touche, Gensler Architecture, Boeing Aerospace, Met Life, and the MGM Grand and Mirage Hotel & Casinos, to the retired bus driver who called raving after his lasik surgery about how bright his paintings are, or the schoolteacher who took two years to pay off her painting.

The extraordinary luminous circles that now grace the sixty-by-twenty-foot wall of the Equinox Spa and Gym in Dallas were pitched without Chris ever having painted a single circular piece of acrylic. Subsequently one viewer reveling at the installation led to his next challenge, a commission inspired by that same Equinox piece, for the lobby of the new Dove Mountain Ritz Hotel, in Tucson, Arizona.
From the smallest to the largest work, the majesty and magnitude of each is equally imbued with color and suffused with magical light. Yet the simplicity of his pieces belies a complex underpinning of thought and technique. While the metallic paints impart a luminosity that changes depending upon the angle of viewing, the paint dries very quickly. Chris has described painting this way like a chess game – thinking four or five moves ahead to avoid literally painting himself, and the piece, into a corner.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Munich curator of reverse glass painting, Simone Bretz, states, “Well-executed reverse-glass paintings do not reveal the complexity of their manufacture. Since the designs are applied to the back of glass panes they must be built up in reverse – starting with the foreground and working “backwards” – which makes corrections virtually impossible.”
“The closer a piece is to natural formations or patterns the more successful I feel it is”, says Martin. “There is a great art piece by Marcel Duchamp. I can’t remember the title, but he left a piece of glass in nature for a year and then represented it as art. It’s an example of the artistic effect of time and weather. It also challenges what we think of as art.”

For Martin, art is a very internal process. His abstractions draw on “patterns of nature occurring within other patterns,” and are then processed through soul-searching sessions of substantive painting.

From his studio looking out at the east Texas fields Chris marvels, “When you observe wood grains, the veining of a marble slab, the alternating colors in petrified wood, sand dunes, rivers, mountains, deserts, cellular formations, they are all inherently poetic and attuned to the laws of abstraction. Study them closely, and you’ll identify compositions of wondrous abstraction. We are surrounded by these masterpieces.”

Several works are studies detailing foliage markings while others capture random patterns of water droplets or splashes - allowing the viewer a peek into an organic kaleidoscope of unexpected order. It is precisely this order which harnesses the colorful chaos, bringing strength and harmony to each work. But Martin didn’t plan it this way – he creates by allowing each painting to take on a life of its own – experimenting until “the piece finds its pulse, that’s the exciting part”, he says.
Constantly experimenting with application methods keeps Christopher freshly engaged. His wit is apparent when he says, “The control and manipulation of patterns of water and paint is much like herding cats,” but the end results can be truly beautiful.’

 

We’ve all seen the tiny brown prehistoric shells left behind. We know the buzz saw call that signals the dog days of summer, but have you ever really seen a newborn cicada? Huge black patent eyes and seemingly hand-painted 24-karat gilt accents evoke the scarabs of Egypt. Its’ body is a spectacular mint green with sky blue gossamer wings. We admire it for a moment before it climbs from his hand, to his paint encrusted shorts, finally perching atop the shoulder of his technicolor paint shirt; a white V-neck who knows how many workdays and washes later. The earthy art critic, John Berger offered this legend of cicadas, “They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet ~ because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.”

It is the night before Chris leaves for Los Angles to open a new gallery. Both coasts were considered. He chose the one with the sun. New galleries are nothing new. In the past fifteen years, Christopher has had at least six gallery incarnations in Dallas – all successful. Each left behind like a brown cicada shell so he could reincarnate young and green.
If Christopher Martin were a chartable stock, his graph would be off the charts. He is truly living the dream: fifteen years of painting gorgeous paintings and creating a substantial body of work, his own beautiful galleries, large commissions, big checks, a long list of collectors, and a painting studio situated on four point two beautiful Texan acres. He has a happy family. And, CHM is also incredibly fit, driven, smart, and handsome.
Hate him yet? For the record, I should divulge now, that I am his wife. Don’t let that deter you. I have much to report.

In the middle of America, it is Africa hot. From the deck of the painting studio, Bob Marley’s, “One Fine Day,” blasts to the weeds and butterflies. On the studio wall, a print scored at a flea market exhorts, “All fear is bondage.” Christopher’s studio sits atop a limestone dome with a cathedral view of the sky. Ten Mile Creek pulls a ribbon of trees through the Grand Prairie south of Dallas known as Cedar Hill, Texas. On the studio deck beneath tall wooden tables, four large dogs sleep on plywood floors drenched and spattered with paint. With the beasts underfoot, and the elevation, it’s reminiscent of a feudal fort. A vein of quartz separates the studio from the creek. Coyotes, falcons, owls and snakes are more regular sights than our neighbors. In the fall, the red flags of sumac wave in front of the cedars that surround the fire pit in front of the studio. In the spring, wildflowers riot.

Chris surveys a dripping sheet of clear acrylic engaged in the random dance of governing water and pigment. He will be forty this year. As he paints, I ask the shirtless, Martin about the weight of being a mid- career artist. His answer is a good one, “It’s when what you’ve done buoys you and what you need to do rocks the boat.”
He checks himself, “Is that what it is? I’ll feel like I’m mid-career in ten more years. Not yet.” He looks at the sky squinting, “If you start when you’re twenty, and end when you’re eighty… that’s sixty years. Then the middle is thirty years in…” He continues, “I’ve been doing it fifteen so I’m quarter career. Mid-career is when you peak. I hope I haven’t peaked yet.” Chris has always maintained that he will likely never retire.

I would offer that he is as incapable of it as a shark is of pausing to rest, the quintessential workaholic artist.
“How often do you want to quit?” I watch as the clear acrylic takes on tribal hues. The sun glints off strong shoulders as he washes color over the wet acrylic. There used to be a cedar grove at the studio’s southern corner, but those were scalped for a helping of hot Texas sun. Something about drying times…
“Saying it sometimes makes me feel better, but I never really want to quit. It gets harder to edit, and to make something you passionately love. There has to be a unique element that separates a piece from the 3,000 paintings you’ve already made.”

When Chris and I first met, he thought he would die young. Thankfully, he doesn’t speak of that anymore. In the spa cabin attached to his studio hangs a framed print, “The Chronology of Painters. Creators of Western Art 1250 to the Present” (which in this case was 1950.) A gift from an early assistant, Robert Patterson, it serves to humble and capture the randomness of art history. Hung above the toilet, Christopher sees this print everyday, if it still registers. Bands of color floating above each artist’s name correspond to their life span. Chris has lost two dear assistants and champions of his work. Kolin Ooi, his Malaysian assistant of nine years and Robert Patterson who was Chris’ gallery director for three years from 1999 to 2001. It is such a loss and a shame. Everyone needs the lodestar of people who know where you come from, the ones in your corner with sponges and Vaseline saying, “Get back in the ring and kick some ass.” Kolin knew when Chris was painting well and when he wasn’t. But his motto of “No Problem” was usually just the tonic Chris needed to keep moving. Kolin cared deeply about Chris, leaving a painful hole in the fabric of family and work as he departed a year ago.
A scholar of abstract art, Robert always maintained that Chris was destined for greatness. After assisting Chris in Dallas, he represented Chris in his own Austin gallery for a time before his own tragic exit. Robert coined the word, ‘organimatism’ to describe Chris’ work. Google it, and you’ll find only my references to his apt word. He would love that.

Twenty-six degrees, four minutes north and eighty degrees, nine minutes west of the equator,
Christopher was born in the latitude of Fort Lauderdale, 1969. He will always function best by the water. His doting and beautiful silver-haired mother, a good landscape painter, is the source of his artistic gene. His father kicked in the business acumen and optimistic visionary genes. Were it not for a reversal of fortune, the whole family might be yachting in the Bahamas. Both of Chris’ parents have worked tirelessly in the gallery sharing their talents and energy to see that Chris’ success continues. That it’s a family affair has always been a blessing; it’s the Martin Way.

Being in control of his gallery space in addition to creating the art has been the formula from the beginning. Not many artists have the cojones or energy to run their own gallery.
There are those who cast stones with the pejorative of “vanity gallery.”
When asked about this, Chris will tell you, “I have a venue for my artwork to be seen and purchased. I enjoy the business aspect of being an artist. It’s a challenge and something I find extremely engaging. Self-representation takes something that is 50% and makes it 100%. A lot of artists have done it throughout history and engaged that process.”
He cites Damien Hirst selling his work through Sotheby’s and effectively self-representing. We argue for a moment as I think it’s completely different since there is no Damien Hirst Gallery, but I let it go. Often, we are like puppeteers pulling each other’s strings and laughing at the known results. Pursuing this argument would be futile. I have ten years of them to prove it.
The National Endowment for the Arts funded a study called, “Artists in the Workforce from 1990-2005,” which researched artistic trends based upon census data. The study found, “Compared with the American labor force as a whole, artists are much more likely to be self-employed. Almost one-third of artists were self-employed in 2000, compared with less than 10 percent of the labor force. About half of fine artists and writers were self-employed, with photographers at 42 percent and musicians at 35 percent.

This pattern of high self-employment was evident in the 1990 census data, but the 2003-2005 data indicate that the numbers of self-employed artists are increasing, with 35 percent of all artists self-employed, and each artist occupation showing more than 20 percent self-employed.”
Seeing this, I know there are paint pioneers scattered across America living history that hasn’t even been written yet - right now. As an artist’s wife, the support I give him sometimes feels like a two-legged tripod. There are days I wish I could find the other painters living this dream in America. How many are there? Where are they? Who are they? I often wish for him his own Algonquin table or the Parisian salons in the early twentieth century… compatriots to commiserate, laugh, and drink with… Painting can be such a lonely occupation.
When I ask him with only a touch of irony, “What’s it like living The Dream?”
He says, “You have to remind yourself it’s a dream…” His blue eyes scan the distance thoughtfully,
“I guess the dream is a constant work in progress, not a place you reside. When you have the kind of life we do and write it all down, it’s blessed and magical, but it comes with a heavy toll.” Selling over a million dollars worth of paint in a year takes a small village. It is one thing to paint to sustain yourself. Another thing entirely to support your family, and the growing list of assistants: the men who hoe the fields at the Martin Art Farm by sealing, constructing, framing and delivering the work, the team of women who tend to the business details of the gallery, your “overseer” father, two kids, four dogs, a cat and a wife.
In the face of this sometime burden, I decided Christopher needed a holiday from duty and obligation, and conspired to surprise him for Christmas. I try to do a respectable job as muse, but this time I may have overshot… As the only bidder on a triple black Alpha Romeo Spider Veloce convertible on Ebay, I’ve now realized ‘overpriced’ might be a fair description. Especially since after two joy rides, the car went to visit the mechanic semi-permanently. But CHM will tell you even though it’s not his be-all end-all dream car, that it is still his favorite gift of all time. Riding so closely to the road, that you can feel the seams in the pavement, the leathery smell of the hand-stitched seats, and the wind in his hair have a restorative effect on said artist especially when he drives the Alpha to his beloved yoga after drinking a large cupful of homemade vegetable juice. Cars are central to Chris’ existence. We are in the car again as this conversation unfolds. No Mini Cooper of the interview from five years ago – it’s a GMC Yukon – a beast of a car perfect for the 40,000 miles he has put on it this past year; both coasts for art shows, photo trips, and deliveries. ‘The Kon’ is usually stacked to the headliner with paintings.
Phone the neighborhood kids and warn them now. Apparently, The Dream takes a lot of hard work.

“Anxiety bites the nails of success.” is Chris’ favorite quote. Attributed to Bono, it is the distillation of the way he feels about the view from his current pinnacle. As we talk and drive, Governor Clements’ 2,000 acre former ranch unreels like a ribbon in the window behind him “For me, there are two perspectives you can take on creativity. One, every time you create something good, it pulls from a finite pool of creativity. Or, that it’s a generative thing, the more you do, the more you create… the better it becomes.” He leans toward the windshield resting on the wheel, “You fall into one of those two camps… and it can change on a daily basis. One day I feel like that, and another day I feel like, ‘How many more of these expressions can I go through and be good at it?”
My hand is cramping as I wonder which is truer: that creativity is infinite, or capped by a quota of greatness? I vote infinite. “It’s just,” he bites his lip and glances in the rearview mirror, “it all comes back to your perspective and putting too much emphasis on success and failure. Is it a huge deal or no big deal? It’s a paradox you’re constantly balancing. I’m constantly moving and working in a way that can be really gut wrenching… It’s tough – and feels hard right now. The majority of the time it feels challenging…” He hesitates before rounding out his dismount with the optimism that has buoyed his entire artistic life, “…with windows of coasting.”

If you visit our gallery in Dallas, know two things. One, it is a world-class gallery space in every respect. I would covet it if Chris and I walked into it in any other city. Two, it is a beautiful mausoleum in the midst of the misnamed Victory development. We are lucky to have a devoted following, but it has been like watching a watering hole dry up in the Okavango Delta. Some days it feels like we’re the last crocodiles in fast drying mud. It is because of this that the expansion to LA feels acutely relevant. Timing the swing from the platform of the known ~ to the trapeze bar of ‘The Next Right Thing’ can feel perilous.
I ask him about the next plum he’d like to pick.
The analogy escapes him and he says eloquently, “Huh?’
The universe sends me a better analogy as we pull up to a “T” intersection with a grimy white building painted with the words, “Third Wish.”
It is absurdly unexpected and surely inspires everyone passing it to daydream. We look at it, and I say to him archly, “Well?”
He says, “I already got my first two… First, to do what I’m doing and have it provide for a living. Second, to marry you.”
He is really not stupid this artist husband of mine.

“Third, healthy kids.”
This wish is likely motivated by his work with sick children.
The Kidz Creations paintings he paints with children have raised well over $250,000. It is never lost on us how bitterly arbitrary life can be after a painting session with the children.
“You get four?” he asks.
“You tell me.”
“Hell yes.”
He contemplates a moment, “Wishing for happiness is too subjective. My fourth wish would be calmness and being at peace with myself. Contentment. Even being content with change. Contentment, faith, and execution, and that all those things can live together with ease.”
Faith is not a word Christopher uses often. Most religions annoy him, so it’s necessary to follow up on that one.
“Faith in what?’
“That the next idea is good, and that something better will come of it. Faith in my ideas and the ability to execute.” I take it as a good sign that already the colors he is painting with are more exuberant. Our company is Radiant Fortune after all….

All great artists are blessed with patrons. Chris is lucky enough to have a few.
The Packer family of Dallas owns one of the most dynamic and comprehensive collections of Chris’ work. Their beautiful home is museum-like in its display of the gorgeous large-scale pieces they have collected over the last twelve years. As asset manager of a large real estate portfolio, Melayne Packer has played a role in shepherding several corporate commissions to Chris, like the spectacular sky lobby paintings of the Wells Fargo Plaza building in Houston Texas. A diminutive platinum-haired angel, our Lady of the Arts, Melayne, says, “To look at his paintings is to be transported from where you stand into his translucent yet deeply colorful world. Then you meet the man behind the art, and you think to yourself, ‘Of course!’ Because Chris can articulate with clarity how he views the world. The best part is that he shares with us that world, which is gorgeous, through his eyes. My husband and I have collected many of his pieces, and we love that our home is immersed in his art. My favorite piece looks like so many suns and planets exploding in a happy universe. It's a trip worth taking!”

There are the Wills of Arlington, Texas, the married couple that verge on addiction with a prolific collection of sixty-nine pieces dating from their first purchase in 1997 from the Milan Gallery in Fort Worth. When Chris does work with other galleries, they have usually been family-owned. The Milan Gallery of Fort Worth and The Kodner Gallery of St. Louis are outstanding examples of respected family-run galleries that have been great partners over the years. In the twelve years Tal Milan has represented Chris’ work, he will tell you, “I have had no other artist that I've given more shows over the years than Christopher Martin. Chris has been the consummate artist! Always pushing his techniques to new highs. Almost yearly, we have watched him grow his talents and reinvent this unique style of art. I have said many times, ‘I believe Chris to have the golden touch.’ He is an artist that continually betters greatness. One very important facet is that his work appeals over and over, so the clients always have multiple pieces. They never stop at one purchase.”
The Wills are the perfect example of this. When I playfully ask if Dale and Cindy Will need an intervention, Dale tells me, “It is a multi-faceted answer. Over the years the allure of Chris' work has been its constant evolution. His work has remained vibrant, unique and timeless - we never tire of looking at our pieces. Our friendship has played a role - it is great to hear the story behind the paintings, it makes each one unique. Everyone associated with Chris (family, friends, employees, simply everyone) has an absolute and sincere enthusiasm for his work. The one thing we can say with surety is that we have never purchased a Chris painting as an investment - each one is hung and enjoyed whether it is in our house or the overflow gallery ~ the neighbors. Some may say we’re addicted. In the kindest, gentlest way, we simply say we need more walls.”
The spectrum of Chris’ collectors runs the gamut from former President George Bush Sr., who was given one of Chris’ 9-11 flags as the recipient of The Joseph Prize, to the retired bus driver who called raving after his lasik surgery about how bright his paintings are, to the schoolteacher who took two years to pay off her painting.

Brian Evetts, a friend and collector left his job in the world of finance for a year and a half hiatus to work with Chris in the art world. When I ask him for any thoughts, he is happy to share them with me, ‘albeit a shortened and sanitized version.’ “I have been lucky enough to call Chris a friend for about 10 years having been blown away by one of his paintings during a visit to the Dallas area for work. Upon first meeting him and getting a call shortly thereafter to join him for a drink, a friendly bond grew based on mutual respect of each other’s life experiences and curiosities about business, pursuing success and enjoying life's journey. I got to know Chris during our endless late night discussions over my vodka and his bourbon. During these discussions, we routinely debated the day's political, economic, and social topics. Or better said, I tried to rebut what was usually a pretty adamant Chris on a topic for the day. We always turned to each other’s business challenges and offered up insight; serving as a sounding board for frustrations and successes. I became very impressed with Chris's business knowledge and how he applied his creativity and entrepreneur based approach to business and life. I was an Executive Director for a software company that sold to predominantly financial institutions. We routinely held seminars where we brought executives from some of the world's largest financial institutions together for joint discussions and presentations. I brought Chris in as a guest speaker. It was always an audience of bankers, who worked in a profession that was very regimented, structured and worlds apart from the field of art or the life of an artist. However, Chris was able to establish a strong bond with these folks through his ideas about creativity and approaching each day as if it's a clean canvas from which to define success. His life story and approach to day-to-day living truly became an inspiration to those he spoke to and we leveraged Chris routinely for motivational speeches. I was always blown away by their reactions and how inspired everyone felt after hearing him speak.

We began to talk about the opportunity to expand his career and extend the focus of his marketing efforts outside of the Dallas area and outside the boundaries typically defined by galleries representing artists. As we were brainstorming these ideas, I was getting bored with the grind of corporate life. I was always inspired by Chris' do it yourself approach and over time decided that if I was ever going to pursue life outside the closing walls of the corporate world, that now would be the time to do it. And who better to do it with than a good friend who defied the laws of needing or wanting to work for someone else? Even though I had a fairly luxurious lifestyle, and a steady executive position that took me all over the world, I left it all for a cause deeply rooted in my heart: a desire to help Chris be successful in his career as an artist. I spent a year and a half helping market Chris throughout the country by talking to galleries, art consultants, designers and architects about Chris' works. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had, having a chance to work with a good friend, traveling the country and selling what I believed and continue to believe is a revolutionary talent in the field of art. Chris is not even close to being recognized on the national and international level that I believe he will be over time.

Through all of that work effort, one constant remains, my respect and admiration for Chris on a personal level. He is caring, thoughtful and would do just about anything to assist those in need whether it's his family, his friends, the kids he supports through many of his charities, or a stray dog he finds in the street. On top of it all, his artwork continues to evolve and impress. The opening of his first gallery outside of Dallas in Los Angeles is exciting for me for the obvious art collecting opportunities that it will present, but also for knowing that it is another small step in what will continue to be an evolving and expansive career for Chris the artist and yet another journey I get the opportunity to discuss with a good friend.”

Chris and I pass a rock dealer. How nice to be a rock dealer. Rocks never go out of style, there’s always a need, an endless supply, and the people come to you and haul them away.
I often marvel that Chris keeps producing and reinventing. He can’t just pick up the phone and reorder inventory... But people do call and order “stuff” up on the phone from him... He makes it look easy to “paint to order,” but it is a tall order to match someone’s nebulous expectations.
“Commissions…” was there ever a more stifling word? Often the check can be freeing, but the execution can be knotty. He has painted two three-story paintings for the sky lobbies of the Wells Fargo Plaza in Houston. His metallic halide photos grace hotels and restaurants in multiple cities. And there is the most recent installation, a 54’ x 20’ painting in the lobby of the spectacular Equinox spa and gym in Dallas.
Chris’ inspiration is the pursuit of intricate patterns that mimic nature. As he creates, he manipulates heat, wind, water and pressure to achieve that end. Subtle fractionalizations of color like those found in petrified wood, the veining of a marble slab, or reflections on water are the same harmonies he seeks for his paintings and photographs.
The extraordinary luminous circles that grace the sixty-by-twenty-foot wall of the Equinox Spa and Gym in Dallas were pitched without Chris ever having painted a single circular piece of acrylic. For two weeks, we all gave him a wide berth as he grumbled around the property, stomping about until he finally found his groove with the new medium with spectacular results. The current challenge occupying his paint table is a commission inspired by that same Equinox piece, for the lobby of the new Dove Mountain Ritz Hotel, in Tucson, Arizona.

Our son Conrad is speaking with his Daddy on the phone as Chris drives to Los Angeles. Chris stopped in Phoenix after driving 16 hours and sold a piece to collectors who live in the area. When three-year-old Conrad asks what his Daddy is doing, Chris says, “Daddy sold a painting today…” Precious one-year-old Piper chimes in a singsong voice, “Daddy, painting….” Conrad hesitates, his blue eyes wide. I prod him gently after a moment of silence. “What do you want to tell your Daddy?” meaning only for him to tell him about our day. In a big voice, he says, “Thank you!” We laugh and laugh.

One week and three thousand miles later, The Martin Lozano Gallery in LA is open for business. Kandy Lozano, a phenomenal encaustic artist we represented in our fourth Dallas gallery, now lives in Malibu. She and Chris decided to open a gallery together sharing the risks and rewards. Fortuitously Chris sold a sizeable painting the first day the new gallery was open for business. Chris will tell you it feels like he’s hiked to the top of a mountain to set up base camp for the next climb to the summit… He is tired but hopeful. The flag is planted. What will the view from this peak be? We joke that our next stop will be our own island, but it is definitely in the telescope. Check back in ten years to see if that is indeed our manifest destiny.

In 1996, Christopher Martin painted a fresh green painting and christened it, “Going to California,” after the famous Zeppelin folk song. Thirteen years and a thousand gallons of paint later, he creates the successor to that piece. He had to feel the road and scan the horizon before he was able to paint the expansive, twelve-by-four foot painting, “Gone to California.” It is a vibrant, dynamic piece of work full of movement and depth, circles and light. It looks like technicolor raindrops on water. The last lyrical lines of Plant’s song, ‘Going to California,’ “Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams, telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems,” are where we find our hero today.

The gallery's namesake is playing "Italian Job" at the wheel of a MiniCooper. He negotiates curves flying between fields of wildflowers and cow pastures while lamenting that the car will not do a good skid. Road trips have always unleashed his wheels.

In the passenger seat, I am futilely trying to write our conversation
in script I can read. Two universals about artists have led us to this
moment.

Artists are notorious for procrastinating.

It is exactly this need to rub against the hard wall of a dead line
that has resulted in great work throughout history. Three weeks of pleading for a new artist's statement have brought us to the eve before it is due.

Artists speak through their chosen medium.

If that medium is not pen and paper, clarifying the results of your
painting career through the written word can be a frustrating task especially when writing about abstract art.

Chris' first attempt at his statement began, "I have always been a bit
conflicted about the idea of an artist statement. To put into words
what one spends so much time expressing visually seems bane and redundant."

Not exactly the distillation of his creative genius I had in mind.

He finally agrees to allow me to interview him, but it must be now, and
it must be in the car. As his wife and gallery director, I have spent
many hours in the car with Chris driving coast to coast with art in tow. I know the freeing effect the road has on us both. But an 80 mph interview, while taking notes on a legal pad, in a car with the suspension of a hummingbird, would challenge even Diane
Sawyer.

We begin by cautioning each other about what we don't want. He doesn't want me to censor him because I know him so well, and I don't want him to sound lofty and abstract. I want the Christopher Martin you get over a Jack Daniel's and Coke ranting on every topic under the sun. This man is never lacking ideas, opinions, or passion.

Question one: "What do you remember about the early days of painting?"

He begins, "I remember how exciting and free creation was, the
curiosity I felt, the joy of realizing a finished piece. The outcome didn't matter. I didn't care what people thought. No one relied on the piece being good or not.

I didn't have a studio to paint in so I left multiple apartments
covered with paint, and I would think, 'there goes another deposit.'

The reward then, and still today, is to finish a piece that moves me,
or a piece that confronts me. I want to feel something as a viewer as
opposed to an artist. Once I experienced that feeling, my paintings became a very important part of life. As a painter, I think you have to allow yourself to look at art both ways - as a viewer and an artist."

"Do you find it easier to create now than you did then?"

"I find it easier to paint better today, but I can't seem to paint as
much. The funny thing about experience with your medium is that the more you work with it the less experimental you become. Inherently that will slow your production down. The more experience you have with medium the more critical you become of your output. You become more careful of your mistakes. That carefulness can kill an artist's career. Experience can be an asset or a liability. Luckily, I wake up more days thinking my experience is an asset and not a liability."

We gas up for our trip further into the Texas countryside and the past.

He loathes my next question, "What inspires you?"
He colorfully informs me that it's a bull**** question and that
someone's got to take that out of artist interview 101. But then he relaxes, saying, "Life inspires me. You do, history, people, places, animals, weather, plants, filling a gallery with paintings, and at times my own paintings do."

I go back to the early days, preceding his definition of himself as an
artist. It is 1991 and he is young and owns a tropical fish store in
Orlando, Florida. He is painting the windows of the store with reef
scenes in the midsummer heat and boredom of a slow retail summer. The dazzling colors and patterns of tropical fish still influence his work today.

"What were you feeling when you were painting the windows of your fish store?"

"Other than hot, the thing I remember most was a surge of confidence.
Something in the feel of the brush, the paint, and the glass made me
feel like I'd grabbed a key to something very important to my life. It
wasn't about painting the fish. It was more serious. I sensed something in the connection of paint and glass. It's so different from the feel of paint on canvas.

I ask if he saw the handwriting on the wall designating him artist.

"I didn't see it, but I felt it."

"Are there any pictures of that window?"

"I don't think so." I grimace with regret - I want to see the genesis.
He informs me for the first time in five years of knowing him that the
window was not reverse glass painted but painted simply on the outside of the glass.

"How long did it take you to start the reverse glass painting style?"

"Five months."

"Why so long?"

"I had a vision of painted broken glass - shattered but bound by the
paint. That vision led to curiosities about the possibilities of the medium. Terrible experiments with broken glass eventually led me to the reverse glass method." Today, Gallery Four is full of twenty large acrylic paintings in celebration of his ten years as a career artist. The vibrant acrylic on acrylic pieces glow with iridescent and metallic highlights. Chris' canvases are also hugely popular, but the acrylic on acrylic method has become his signature. It is this technique that allowed Chris
to leap frog up the chain of four galleries he created to exhibit his work. Growing from small gallery/studios to his large Dallas gallery and multiple dealer relationships across the country, he is as masterful at selling his work as he is at creating it. Many of his clients have more than one piece. At his openings, there is an air of friends returning rather than clients.

We are sitting at a stop sign, and Chris asks me which way. We take a
left and accelerate into a corner.

"How have you changed as an artist since the early days?"

He smiles broadly and says flippantly, "I get paid now"

Then allows, "Getting paid for painting is one of the most vulnerable
issues in the art world; the arbitrariness of value. Once value is assigned like a point system it changes people's comprehension of the object. A 55 million dollar Picasso equals 55 million points - that wins in the art continuum. Everyone agrees to abide by Christie's, Sotheby's or the museums' valuations. It's one of the most subjective things in
the world. Ultimately, people can only understand the value of a piece to themselves not anyone else. But once 'Value' is articulated that becomes what's important. When you talk about worth, it can be absurd. At some level, it's completely insane to value art the
way we do as a society. Think about paintings that fetch in excess of what some third world country's GDP amounts to, and worth takes a twisted turn. When you take the comparative value of that Picasso versus the value of the same money for world relief, it seems way off balance.

With my own paintings, I ask myself, 'Would I rather have the painting
or the check?' If I evaluate the value a work will bring to someone's
life, and the client agrees with me on that value, then, I get paid."

I am struggling to write. The road is making my writing nearly
illegible, and he's speaking so quickly... "Slow down!"

He apologizes, and brakes - suddenly the world outside slows to calm
and comprehensible. Life with Chris is often this way - it is just the
speed his brain moves. I try and keep up.

We resume.

"How does being from Florida, your love of fish, and the ocean
influence your work?

"Water. Water is the most powerful and creative force that exists.
It's an element that's shaped nearly everything around us. Our planet wouldn't exist. Living in Florida, you feel the fullness of the water and everything that comes with it - all of the life. All powered by the sun. Not like Portland or the Northwest Coast. They may be swimming in water, but they don't have the sun to catalyze it. Florida fills up with water and burns with the sun. filling and emptying. Full of life."

There is a long full pause and I look over to see his eyes full of
tears.

He is verklempt, and Homesick with a capital "H." Just describing his
home state, it is apparent how difficult the transition to land-locked
Dallasite has been.

"Living around that permanently influenced the way I see the world.
Water connects all living things. Florida has an interesting presence that's very affecting. You either get Florida or you don't. "

He glances in the rear view mirror, "And the fish you asked about, I
handled 400 different types of tropical fish from all over the world. The brilliancy of their colors, the iridescent patterns definitely made a lasting impression on my color theory."

We realize we've been driving without regard for direction and no map
in the car. Briefly we consider stopping for a map, but neither of us want to halt the flow of our conversation. I glance at my page of scribbled questions. Onward.

That Chris' paintings are abstracts to be filed under the heading,
"Abstract Expressionism" is undeniable, but their universal appeal seems firmly rooted in nature. A review of his show titles reveals: Fauna, Elements, Soleil, Liquid, Blur, and Astral Showers.

His style is mercurial changing from the saturated geometrics of his
youth, to floating color fields, and ultimately morphing to the highly organic compositions of today. Robert Ellis Patterson, an early dealer and friend coined the word, "organimatism." to describe Chris' work.

Chris' take on this is, "My current work exists based solely on
observations of nature. I pursue the harmony of the organic. The closer a piece is to natural formations or patterns the more successful I feel it is. Using the same forces nature does, I try and manipulate heat, wind, water, and pressure to harness a natural vision. There is a great art piece by, I believe, Marcel Duchamp. I can't remember the title, but
he left a piece of glass in nature for a year and then represented it as art. It's an example of the artistic effect of time and weather. It also challenges what we think of as art. Andrew Goldsworthy is another manipulator of nature I admire."

He pauses looking out at the east Texas fields, "When you observe wood grains, the veining of a marble slab, the alternating colors in
petrified wood, sand dunes, rivers, mountains, deserts, cellular formations, they are all inherently poetic and attuned to the laws of abstraction. Study them closely, and you'll identify compositions of wondrous abstraction. We are surrounded by these masterpieces."

I think about what Chris uses to achieve his own masterpieces and
laugh: leaf blowers, heat lamps, blow dryers, spray bottles, drills, squeegees - not Mother Nature's poetic tools, but striking results nonetheless.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Munich curator of reverse glass
painting, Simone Bretz, states, "Well-executed reverse-glass paintings do not reveal the complexity of their manufacture. Since the designs are applied to the back of glass panes they must be built up in reverse - starting with the foreground and working "backwards" - which makes corrections virtually impossible."

Chris has described painting this way like a chess game - thinking four
or five moves ahead to avoid literally painting himself and the piece into a corner. The simplicity of his pieces belies a complex underpinning of thought and technique.

"Do you feel a growing mastery of your medium?"

"Absolutely. I feel as though I'm at about a 40% level of mastering
the possibilities. That percentage parallels with my age - I'm probably 40% done with life

"How does ten years of experience affect your perspective?"

"Ten years allows you to start answering these questions. The
retrospect is a ticket to talk about it. There are also areas I know I can't speak anything about. My only education is my experience with the tangibles of living as a career artist negotiating my work and life in the art world."

The word, 'education' prompts me to ask his philosophy on self-educated artists vs. university-educated artists.

"As it affects me personally, and the creation of my art, it is very
insignificant. In the business of art, it affects me greatly. The art
business has an unfortunate tendency to devalue talent that's
self-expressed or not formally trained.

Unlike the music or entertainment industry which celebrates it. I mean
who cares if your favorite musician was schooled or not, or if your
favorite actor went to Julliard?"

I bait him with next question knowing full well what his response will
be. "Can talent be educated?"

He raises and eyebrow and replies, "Art existed before universities!
Cave paintings, tribal pictures.

Process can be learned, materials explained, history can be theorized,
and students get pseudo-subsidized access to studio time so in that sense yes. Does it make artists that weren't already on their way since birth? I don't think so.

In today's reality, most artistic expression is channeled, prepared,
and properly presented to society with a series of acronyms placed behind the artist's name. I'm not from that mold, but I don't let it affect my work. I can't. I have ideas of exploring schooling, but I'm too engaged by my work right now."

We stop speaking briefly between questions for my hand to uncramp, and for enough heads-up time to prevent the interviewer from getting carsick.

"What are your goals for your work?"

"Simple. For my paintings to challenge me, inspire me, provide for me.
I hope to see intricate natural patterns at work, the natural tempo the
lines form, or subtle fractionalizations of color. The pursuit of these defines my paintings as failure or success. Successes allow me to let the paintings go. Failures are the constant correction of a focusing vision. "

He climbs down from his ambitions for a moment. We pass a nondescript church at a junction. There is a tall metal slide sitting like a beacon reflecting the sun. A playground relic that would burn the back of your legs all the way down on a hot summer day. We stop the car and walk over to it both of us silently referencing the feel
of this type slide from a hundred different memories. Chris climbs to the top stumbling on a loose step on the way up. He rates the ride down a disappointment.

Nearby, a decrepit merry-go-round sits beneath a huge tree. The wooden slats are like driftwood - some missing, but the curved metal handholds beg to be spun. We debate the age of the ancient go-round, and then I cannot resist a ride down the slide. I rate it higher than Chris strictly for nostalgia's sake.

An abandoned school bus across the road catches his eye and he wonders about the grandness of things when they were new in the face of their now imminent decay.

I have another question that will make him groan, but I plow ahead
hoping even an ill -conceived question might lead us to an exciting answer.

"What is your favorite part of painting?"
He laughs ironically and says, "Flexible hours?"

"My favorite times are the beginning and ending of a piece, and then
again when it finds a home. But those are also some of the most frustrating times. The middle process, well."

He stops, and never really picks up that thread instead following a
tangent that is probably brilliant, but that will be forever lost to posterity due to his driving and a bouncing legal pad.

I ask him about a charity project we have dubbed Kid's Creations.

"The idea came from Jim Gause in 2002 to work with the kids actually
affected to create something for their own fund raiser."

Charities ranging from Scottish Rite, to Make- a-Wish, and the March of
Dimes have benefited immensely.

"Painting with over 13 groups of children in three years, and raising
close to $100,00 from the auction of the original paintings and prints, has been rewarding in every way. It allowed me to fulfill a desire to take the good fortune I have, and give some of it back. It exposes me to the flow of pure creative expression that is only present when kids are creating without expectations or ego. "

"Who inspires you?"

"It's hard to point to a few. The people who inspire me have done it
with their zeal and conviction - leading with ideas and action. Bill Gates, Sting, Columbus, and the normal list of achievers - the Sinatra, 'did it my way' method. It makes me want to further my craft and my being. It's the courage to stand by whatever call you make that I respect. Follow through is inspiring. The list of people who've done that is long, but never long enough."

We are nearing Dallas now, and I am reluctant to end our field trip.
Thoughts turn to the business we've locked up on a 'school day' for
this madcap jaunt. "Could you talk about being an artist and a gallery
owner?"

"The nontraditional role - has inspired and challenged me. I was
diligent in my efforts to make it happen because I wanted to control the way my work was presented - even if it was ever to be presented. Having my own gallery has been a great opportunity and success for me. It is highly sensitive, and you've got to be careful because it's all so closely tied together. Everything must be kept in check. A lot of artist's deal with the similar issues, but I have an immediate connectivity to people's response to my work is revealing and rewarding."

Chris parks the car in front of the gallery. I think of the success
and reward of having created and sold millions of dollars of work that
nourishes people daily. Most artists' dream of this. This artist reached for his vision, and stretches further everyday. That is the truest artist's statement imaginable.