Even as I climb the steps into painter Martin Brooks’s Devon studio, I know I am in the presence of rare talent.
I see many types of extraordinary painting, but nothing fills me with envy and reverence more than an artist’s ability to capture the unique and vivid quality of other people on canvas. Truly I don’t know how it’s done – whether it is learned or is simply an extraordinary and instinctive gift.
Martin himself is friendly and understated, the kind of person who no doubt makes his sitters feel perfectly relaxed, and he chats about the portraits hung around his studio not as pictures, but as people.
Each one is a friend, or has become a friend, and one is simply a man that Martin passed on the street: ‘He had such an extraordinary face,’ says Martin. ‘I just had to paint him, so I approached him and asked if he would sit for me.’ The resulting painting, Stewart, was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, when it was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Awards, one of the most prestigious painting competitions in the world.
Martin gained a degree in painting from Exeter College of Art and a masters from the Royal College of Art, where he was awarded the Royal College Drawing Prize and Madame Tussauds Prize for Figurative Art. Today he is a member of The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and has painted notable portraits including those of theoretical physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili OBE, for the British Humanist Association, and singer-songwriter Laura Mvula. In 2017 he travelled to the United States after being awarded Arts Council funding to paint the Amish community, creating a touching and deeply human collection of simple but powerful portraits.
Curiously, hanging on the studio wall beside his portraits are a series of small, floral works. ‘During lockdown it wasn’t possible to paint people, so I started to paint flowers from the garden.’
Each is a masterclass in translating the inner light of living things into paint. They are absolutely radiant and filled with life, and Martin has managed to give personality to every beautiful bloom.
These still-life works are, in a very real sense, floral ‘portraits’, and, like his human portraits, they are evidence of a rare creative sensibility, and an appreciation for the fleeting, the precious and the unique.
martinbrooksart.com
