Stemming from a childhood love of Renaissance art and graphic novels, the work of Ferris Martinez revolves around the dissolution of internal identity, viewed primarily through a representational approach - with particular emphasis given to portraiture and the human figure. His recent body of work has focused on the exploration of the individual in an increasingly consumptive society, where one’s own self-affirmed value is often determined by the ability to produce for others.

This theme - that of the erasure of the personal replaced by the external - is largely investigated via the interplay between highly-rendered, controlled detail and loose mark-making interspersed with swaths of color. Using this visual language, it is his aim to create a striking dichotomy that speaks to being unmoored, dissolving in a world where the individual is increasingly atomized and separate, incapable of being viewed as a whole.

Ultimately, engaging in such art-making is an act of self-reclamation, and potently necessary. Each brush stroke is a move away from this odd arrangement the world presently finds itself a part of, where production is valued over dignity, and creativity is ever-more confined to those who can access it.