Sue Martin's "Studio Jazz" won a juror's award at the Utah Watercolor Society's Fall Members Exhibit.

Midvale artist Sue Martin is a busy lady this month. As noted in a post last week, one of her paintings is a prize winner at the Utah Watercolor Society exhibit at Patrick Moore Gallery. Another work was accepted into the University of Utah juried exhibit that just came down at Williams Fine Art (see our article in the October edition of 15 Bytes). And she’s the current featured artist at Art at the Main, in the atrium of Salt Lake’s Main Library.

In Oh, the Places I’ll Go! – Landscapes and Dreamscapes, which opened earlier this month during the Salt Lake Gallery Stroll,  Martin uses her vast collection of travel photographs for inspiration, but she doesn’t try to replicate them. “For me, the purpose of a painting is to capture the feeling of place and the associated memories, not every realistic detail,” she says. Her work often includes personal symbols, like stamps in a passport, signifying that the places she’s been have left their mark on her. Martin’s dreamscapes are mostly abstract explorations of color, patterns, and line layered in the kind of overlapping, surreal way that dreams unfold

The pieces in this exhibit are smaller, as befits Art at the Main’s intimate space. But in her Midvale home, Martin has yet another body of work she’s eager to show — larger pieces that show the artistic development of this “non-traditional” student who graduates with a BFA in December.

With all the work she’s been producing, the former public relations director who says she likes writing almost as much as painting, still finds time to write articles for 15 Bytes. The October edition featured her article on The Breakfast Club, a group of artists currently showing at 15th Street Gallery. And in November she’ll be discussing Scott Blaser, a London-based artist who is bringing a group of paintings and prints to Patrick Moore Gallery in November.

Get out there now and check out her work, and stay tuned for the November edition of 15 Bytes, where we’ll feature a longer profile of the artist.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.