PROFILE: MEREDITH MARTIN

"My purpose is to reveal the energy and spirit of life through my paintings. I feel passionate about being alive and being surrounded by this incredible natural world. I am inspired by the color and character I see in everything – people, animals, and landscapes.

Pastel is my favorite medium because it is pure pigment – it translates the richness of what I see and allows me to include both drawing and painting as strong elements of my work.”

After a career in education administration, Meredith returned to art as a full time endeavor in 1996. Focusing first on wild landscapes and animals, she traveled throughout many of the wildlife refuges of the U.S. – particularly the west – and portrayed these vibrant subjects in her work. She has participated in shows throughout the U.S., and has won numerous awards. More recently, Meredith’s work involves commissioned portraiture, but she continues to show a wide range of subjective and figurative work in her gallery/studio in Center Village, Ohio.

Meredith is a graduate of Fine Arts from Otterbein College, and completed a portion of her education in New Mexico and Mexico, where she studied pre-Columbian art and architecture. She began her art career as a high school and middle school art teacher, later receiving her M.A. from The Ohio State University. In 2004 she opened her gallery/studio in an historic town hall which she and her partner, Fred Hostetler, restored. The gallery has the work of more than a dozen other artists, many of whom are friends and local artists. (See the Calendar page for more information about the gallery/studio.)