Agnes Martin

About

Kettle's Yard welcomes Summer with the quiet but shimmering paintings of Agnes Martin. ‘My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art which is also wordless and silent.' Without objects or forms, Agnes Martin suggested we approach her paintings ‘as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.' Often linked to Minimalism, she maintained that her paintings are concerned with the inner emotional world - our search for a perfection which is impossible to achieve - and the desire for contentment and serenity. The paintings in this exhibition are from her later years when bands of ethereal colour combined with the irregularities of hand-drawn grids. ‘The paintings are very far from perfect — completely removed in fact — even as we ourselves are.' Born in Canada, Agnes Martin (1912-2004) lived most of her life in the United States and became one of the foremost American artists of her generation. At the centre of this exhibition are ten canvases made between 1991-2002 when she lived in the New Mexico desert.