Eddie Martinez

"Think about it. Eddie Martinez is making visual poetry." These are the words of art historian Phyllis Tuchman, and she's spot on. Martinez's paintings and sculptures are a wild ride with the flow and energy of Beat poetry or Dada wordplay. His infectiously energetic brush strokes and full-on compositions (which he often repeats again and again in slightly different ways) have a physical rhythm to them – like poetry, music or dance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this comes from the nature of his studio practice. The way he paints and sculpts is athletic. Up and about, singing and often talking to himself. The restless energy in his body needs a place to go, and that place is his art.

While Martinez is most famous for his paintings, it's his drawing practice that drives everything. In the words of curator Alison M. Gingeras, "drawing has always been the generative engine of his work and how the paintings and even the sculptures come about. He's always drawing. If you have a coffee with him or sitting there in the studio with him, he's drawing." Throughout his life, drawing has been the one thing that's given Martinez a sense of continuity. At a young age, before he'd begun his career as an artist, he discovered the freedom of pen and paper. Their portable nature allowed him to cultivate his drawing as a grounding practice in day-to-day life, rather than something that had to be saved for the studio. Over the years, his connection to drawing has only grown stronger, and it continues to be the backbone of his art today.