You stare at the colors, drawn in to their almost irredescent glow. How does an artist achieve that glow, you wonder, the shading that pulls your eye from one part to the next, and what is it a picture of? Then suddenly it all falls into place, a yellow pepper in a bowl. You smile, enjoying how the artist has taken a simple vegetable and created a beautiful work of art with it. 

You move on to the next painting. This one is obviously a landscape, maybe New Mexico. But you pause, your eye following the almost surrealistic lines of hills and cliffs. Trees seem to dot the green and orange land, but you have never seen trees presented like these. Clean, minimalistic clouds float in the light blue sky. If there is another dimension existing side by side with this one you know as New Mexico, perhaps it looks like this: a plainer, gentler land, where the colors of the rainbow nestle into one another, a dream of a Ray Bradbury planet. What an extraordinary way this artist must see the world, you marvel. You are charmed, intrigued, and delighted.

You have just met the unique work of Martha Kennedy. And you want to see more. You move from painting to painting, immersed in the pleasure of this new way of looking at the world…

Born in Canada, Martha Kennedy began her journey of artistic creation by moving to the states as a child. After high school she took classes, traveled the American West and South America, then returned to Minnesota to finish a degree in printmaking. The lure of the outdoors drew her to become a professional bike racer for six years, before eventually going to Lake Tahoe to pursue massage therapy. Here she could indulge her passion to bike and hike even as she studied the mountains and trees, beginning to see them in a new and exciting way. She began to take more art classes, and was finally led to move to Santa Fe to become a full time artist.

Today Kennedy strives to achieve balance between her art, her husband, and her two dogs. She laughingly refers to her art as “contemporary realism with a surrealistic twist.” She sees the New Mexico landscape as already somewhat minimalist, and combines that minimalism with the need for color that brings her such joy and inner peace. After years of doing massage, she now is able to touch people in a different way, expressing the “dynamic calmness” she tries to live in each day.

Pippin Meikle Fine Art joyfully invites you to enjoy this exceptional artist and her vibrant paintings in your home. Let the peace of her paintings bring the harmony to your environment she finds in her own world.