Mare Martin, “Fire Escape (Persimmon)”, 2016, Etching with Watercolor, 25.4 x 20.3 cm, Private Collection

Born in southwestern Louisiana, Mare Martin is an artist of Cajun descent who spent her formative years on a family farm in Opelousas, a small city in the St. Landry Parish. An integration of life on the land and her artistic practice, Martin’s richly textured work depicts the junction of nature, human spirit and the cosmos.

One of seven family members involved in every aspect of farming, Mare Martin is a gardener as well as an artist; her experiences with gardens in Spain and the southern areas of the United States are interwoven throughout her work. The last two decades of Martin’s work have been heavily influenced by German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s first major scientific work, the 1790 botanical treatise “Metamorphosis of Plants”. She was also inspired by Johann von Goethe’s methodology that encouraged a deepened awareness of form through the reinforcement of sense memory and imagination.

In her process, Martin works as closely to the source as possible. The actual plant with a name is the core idea which expands through multiple media including linen canvases, oil paintings, drawings, and ink transfers. She has more recently embraced more modern methods through technology and projections. Martin’s most recent solo exhibition, “Beyond the Botanical” was held in September of 2025 at the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette. The show revolved around five themes: Gardens, Landscapes and Sky-scapes, Elements, Realms, and Forces.

“It took years of drawing to realize that I wasn’t just observing. I was collaborating. Before that, I painted landscapes and general scenes. But when I began to draw individual plants over and over again, in different seasons and different stages, it brought me a unique understanding. It’s a collaboration, which means my ego as an artist has to step aside. I feel more, and then the work is more pure, closer to the truth.”

—Mare Martin, November 19, 2025, Studio Session at the Hilliard Art Museum of the University of Louisiana,Lafayette

Notes: The Director and Senior Researcher of The Nature Institute, Craig Holdrege, has written an excellent article on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s approach to science which includes the essential features of Goethe’s methodology and insight. The article “Doing Goethean Science” can be found at: https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/craig-holdrege/doing-goethean-science

An extended interview/studio session with Mare Martin was held at the Hilliard Art Museum of the University of Louisiana. This interview, entitled “Mare Martin on Drawing, Meditation, and the Intelligence of Nature”, is locate on the museums’s site: https://hilliardartmuseum.org/stories/mare-martin-on-drawing-meditation-and-the-intelligence-of-nature/