Treasurefirst

New York-based artist Eddie Martinez joins abstraction and representation in energetic, non-traditional ways. Made between 2004 and 2024, and using a broad arsenal of tools including oil, enamel, spray paint, white-out and even detritus from his studio floor, these twenty drawings are characteristic of Martinez's bold, graphic approach. With playful references to popular culture and everyday life, Martinez's pictures preserve the speed and spontaneity of his hand--and the rawness of his technique. Consider this sketch of a pelican, made on the back of a hotel notepad (2025.376); or a floral still-life of zinnias made on found book paper (2025.367). Both drawings are exuberant gestural abstractions that playfully reference art historical tropes, from Audubon's birds, to seventeenth-century Northern Renaissance flower still lifes.