Marty Perlmutter

Since I was 7 years old, I've loved to paint in oil on acrylic. A great disappointment in life is that I didn't become a cartoonist. I always loved to draw on walls, and when I was 12, a mural I painted for my school was placed in the museum at the base of the Statue of Liberty. It was my evocation of the skyline of Manhattan with Lady Liberty in the foreground and it remained in the museum for a year.

I studied oil painting at the Arts Students League in Manhattan, feeling rather awkward (as a pre-adolescent) as I sketched and painted nudes. In my teen years, I developed a pretty good control of pastels.

At college, I covered the walls of my dorm suite with murals and scroll paintings. I took it as a compliment that all my late-Sixties work was stolen. Someone wanted it.

I didn't do much art from '68-'88, but on a year-long trip around the world, seated in a rowboat in Koh Phangan, Thailand, I began to paint watercolors. I haven't slowed down since.

I find landscapes spiritual, particularly the ones that grace our lives in Marin and the Bay Area. Most of these images come from our immediate surroundings. Some are from camping trips taken with my wife, Miki. I paint plein aire, meaning I think it's cheating to use photographs. It's best if you use water from the puddles at your feet in the field or from the waves lapping the shore. The viewer should feel the wind in the grass, as I felt it as I struggled to keep my canvas from blowing away. And more, you should get at least a whiff of what I was feeling as I strove to capture beauty and evanescent spiritual essence of that moment, inspired and enraptured by what caught my gaze.

Enjoy. And thanks for your interest!

-Marty Perlmutter