TEXARKANA, Texas - Make art, will travel - that looks like the theme for the new show "Travel with Me" at Texarkana's Regional Arts Center downtown.
On display through Jan. 25, the exhibition covers all three floors of open gallery space at the RAC with the acrylic paintings of Nancy Hall Martin, whose artistic inspiration comes simply from what she sees in the world.
In an artist's statement, she writes, "I try to observe and find that little spark of color, a ray of warm light, or an expression of joy or delight. I love our beautiful world, and feel so blessed that I can put onto canvas what I see."
What this longtime local art teacher from Atlanta, Texas - now retired - sees may be the mountains of Alaska, a quiet forest road in Tennessee, a misty seashore on the Northeast coast or a quiet river in Arkansas. They're among the inviting scenes she creates in these paintings that populate her first-ever one-woman art exhibition.
What does the show title mean to Martin? When she was contacted to do an exhibit for the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, she'd just returned from a trip.
"I decided I was going to do new paintings for the show, that I wasn't going to use a lot of old stuff," Martin said. Hence, every time she traveled elsewhere, she'd take pictures or sketch what she saw.
Sometimes her destinations weren't far from here, such as the Cossatot River and Louisiana towns, places she might visit on weekend trips. But other destinations drew her traveling artist's eye to Alaska and the East Coast.
One of the first paintings that greets gallery-goers has an ironic title, in a sense, as it depicts an Alaskan forest and mountain scene. An acrylic that plays with light and dark colors, it has the feel of an oil painting.
"I called it 'Alaskan Sunrise' but it never set the time we were there. It was light the whole time, but early mornings it would come up behind (the mountain) but it was never really totally dark," Martin said, noting many people can't tell the difference between her oils and her acrylics.
Nearby is a local scene from Vivian, La., depicting a barbecue joint there. She'd visited a festival and stopped at the restaurant for lunch. A couple of weeks after she painted it, it burned down. But a powerful message was on an outside menu board: "Be Kind Always," which became the title.
The Cossatot River is one of her muses. She has a friend who owns a cabin up there, and her love for the river can be sensed in paintings like "A Little Bit of Heaven."
"It's just beautiful. It's so calm. There's not a lot of people, you know, and it's very calm. I like to go up there to sketch and hang out," Martin said. She's a self-described water person, and so the Cossatot inspires her and relaxes her at the same time. "I'd love to just live up there."
When she travels, Martin brings a sketchbook with pastels and watercolor pencils, and she also can work from photos. She tries to sketch a scene to make a thumbnail reference.
Up on the second floor, her painting "Come Sit a Spell" seems to invite you to sit down and relax, take it easy and enjoy the moment. So many of Martin's paintings have that effect, beckoning the viewer to step inside the painting and enter this pleasant scene, artfully depicted.
A three-and-a-half week RV road trip up and down the East Coast inspired this scene of a particular Virginia porch with colorful, old, wooden chairs - greens, reds, golds, and blues bring a scene to life. "I thought, oh that's kind of cool, those old chairs," she remembers.
Across the hall, Martin's "Illinois Gold" perfectly renders a Midwestern farmland scene. She's attentive to the unique colors and shapes that appear in her paintings. "But it's something about the way the light was hitting it it was just glowing," Martin said.
To see art that captures such glowing light, visit Martin's exhibit at the RAC.
(Admission is free. The Regional Arts Center is open at 321 W. 4th St. in Texarkana, Texas, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. More info: 903-792-8681 or TRAHC.org.)