Art Professor Wins Prestigious Whiting Fellowship
"El Sol" 2012, oil paint on Belgian linen, (36"x40").
Lydia Martin, a professor at Suffolk’s New England School of Art & Design (NESAD), has won a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Faculty Fellowship. The fellowship will enable her to spend a month this summer in Paris on a research project of her own devising. Martin is one of 36 recipients out of 118 applicants in New England.
Martin’s residency in Paris coincides with the city’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’s groundbreaking ballet, the Rite of Spring, which premiered in the then newly constructed Theatre des Champs Elysees. Martin will study the circle of artists that participated in that event. Russian art director Serge Diaghilev drew upon a rich network of composers, painters, designers, and architects to produce a multi-media event that led to further collaborations among artists such as Matisse, Picasso, and Goncharova, and composers such as Debussy, Ravel, and Satie.
Upon her return from Paris, Lydia will give a presentation to her students on her research and will incorporate a variety of creative explorations in drawing and painting into her teaching.
An artist and contemporary realist painter, Martin has taught drawing, painting, and perspective at NESAD for 24 years. This past fall, Martin had a solo exhibition of her work at the Chabot Gallery in Providence, RI featuring a new series of oil paintings inspired by the traditional images associated with the popular Mexican game Loteria.