Artist Adrian Martinez in his Downingtown home Feb. 8, 2024 with one of 12 paintings he is currently working on depicting scenes from the Battle of Brandywine during the Revolutionary War. (Bill Rettew — Daily Local)
Most artists are just a little bit different from the rest of us. Downingtown painter Adrian Martinez is no exception.
I covered a Martinez show back in May of 2017. We were alone in the gallery.
Suddenly — without warning — he reached up and softly caressed one of his paintings.
“You can’t do that!” I yelped. “You can’t touch a painting.”
Martinez smiled and said that he had painted the depiction of Chester County botanist Humphrey Marshall, hadn’t seen it in a while and missed the painting. He then told me that I too could touch that huge work of art.
I refused.
Flash forward to an evening earlier this week. While visiting Martinez’s home, he again suggested I touch his work — this time it was for an unfinished painting sitting on an easel.
Intrigued, I reached up and gently, very gently, took my palm and petted the oil painting. Nothing magical happened. It simply felt like canvas.
Yes, it was good to get that out of my system.
Since 2007, I’ve asked guards at several museums whether visitors regularly touch paintings. Those guards told me that people do sometimes touch. They are often told by museumgoers that they just couldn’t help themselves.
A guard at a Pittsburgh museum told me that paintings often need to be professionally cleaned, and damage is sometimes done since some can’t just look at art as is intended.
It was a one-time instance for me, and while I had permission from the artist, I’ll certainly never do it again.
Martinez’s Victorian home has the look and feel of a museum. There’s furniture handmade by the artist, dozens of paintings and even stained glass windows depicting the four seasons, and a family crest and motto.
Spellbound by nudes
As part of a tour, Martinez nonchalantly showed me a painting of his nude wife displayed in a prominent spot on a wooden stairway. I wasn’t shocked, but maybe a little stunned.
“Now you’ve seen my wife nude, but you’ve never met her,” Martinez quipped. He also told me that this particular painting was not for sale.
The artist also talked about the first time, at age 18, when he saw a naked model, a “spectacular-looking female.”
He said that after two or three times with models, he was still spellbound and swept away, but now when a nude poses, it has become not completely erotic.
“Painting my wife naked is business, it’s professional, but I‘m human too.
“Primarily (painting nudes) is business although the beauty of a human body can be breathtaking. It’s magic.”
Artist preferences
Martinez paints mostly with oils. He said he can make do-overs and fix mistakes when using oil paints that he can’t with watercolors.
“That’s why I do it,” he said.
Martinez also told me that art buyers want to see signatures on a painting. He sometimes chooses to scratch his name into still-wet oil paint. You’ve got to see his large signatures to believe it.
Martinez makes preliminary sketches, but much of what he paints first sits between the ears.
“I see it as it goes,” he said. “I envision it in my mind.
“Usually, I see it as all done. It’s all in my hands. I feel it with my eyes.”
He uses electric light. Martinez said that northern light, the favorite for many artists is cold. He works at an easel with bright lights illuminating the canvas.
“I can’t have the light changing on me,” he said. “I have to have dependable light exactly the same 24/7.”
The artist who uses goat hair, hog bristle and sable brushes compared his painting to running a computer-aided design, or CAD, program.
Friends in high places
Martinez is good friends with former President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. His depiction of a scene of the private residence at the White House was printed on about a million 2001 Presidential Christmas cards.
Martinez has visited presidential retreat Camp David with the Bushes to “just hang out.”
His secret to staying buddies with one the most powerful men in the world? Don’t quote for the media and press what Bush says in private.
Currently, Martinez is working on 12 canvases depicting the daylong Battle of Brandywine. The canvases measure 4 by 5 ½ feet.
Only two paintings show the actual bloodshed of the battle. All the rest, focus on the consequences to residents and the environment.
So what’s it like to visit art museums?
“Sometimes you can learn something from a great masterpiece,” he told me. “Other work is not so perfect.”
But still, Martinez learns from paintings that aren’t top-notch.
“Their struggle is very obvious,” he said.
The artist has a game plan and only has “so much energy” to see so many paintings on a single visit.
“I might have favorite paintings if I’ve been to the museum before,” he said. “I know what’s there and look at my favorites.
“And you never know what painting is going to strike you. What’s the painting that’s going to take my breath away?
“You can’t anticipate.”
He doesn’t favor signed limited-edition prints.
“Why buy a bicycle when you can buy a car?” he asked.
Martinez also works with wood to make furniture and with copper engravings.
I first learned of Martinez through his work depicting botanist Humphrey Marshall. There were no cameras when Marshall was alive, and no one knows what he looked like. How to paint his portrait?
Another internationally recognized botanist hails from near Downingtown. Davis Culp posed as Marshall and in essence, on canvas, became the 300-year-old botanist.
“All he had to do was sit in a chair in his living room and he was Humphrey,” Martinez said.
A similar technique was used for a portrait of the last of the Lenape Indians in Chester County, Hannah Freeman, also known as Indian Hanna.
Martinez, 74, gives back.
He often teaches young artists and wants to start a community of artists.
“I want to teach very talented people,” he said. “I’m not an old master but I’m certainly old and I know a lot.
“To share is satisfying.”
So Martinez keeps on painting and touching his work. I prefer to simply look with my eyes. May we continue to relive local history through his work.
Bill Rettew is a weekly columnist and Chester County native. He has a hard time painting between the lines, even when painting a house. The best way to contact him is at brettew@dailylocal.com
