Martha Jo Mahoney - Painting

Artist Martha Jo Mahoney’s canvas reflects her travels across the Americas, the Far East as well as Florida landscapes where she grew up. Mahoney works with vivid colors in oil, acrylic, chalk and graphite on canvas and paper in a style influenced by modern American “realist expressionist” painters such as Mitchell, Diebenkorn and De Kooning.

“Working quickly, continuously layering paint and medium down and pushing it around with brush or hands, keeping no area sacred... always baiting accidents, playing with the medium and striving to achieve a balance between accident and control. My images are derived from nature and remembered feelings of the landscapes from my travels and home.”

After studying Fine Arts at the University of Florida with the likes of Hiram Williams and Lenny Kesl, she moved to the northeast where she developed her style of painting around Chaddsford, Pa, Princeton, NJ and the New York area. Martha has returned to Central Florida where she works out of her studio and continues her exploration of painting.

I have always been intrigued with the endless potential of non-objective painting. This form of expression has always provided me with an unparalleled means of conveying emotion and mood.

Today my work continues to focus on the evocative and poetic rather than the descriptive. For me, painted arrangements stand as metaphors for things in nature, both physical and spiritual. Elements and relationships come into being, evolve, and phase out or transform, just as things do in life. The process is fluid and organic. I love working over and layering the paint, taking away, adding, and balancing accident and control to arrive at a feeling of resolution.