Art. Works on Paper. by Martha Jackson Jarvis.
by superselected · Abstract Works, Art, Martha Jackson Jarvis ·

Martha Jackson Jarvis, Black Woman Artists, African-American Woman Artists
(Free Spirits I, Mixed-media drawing including black walnut ink,
watercolor, oil, wax, raw pigment, collage, and photo transfer)


Martha Jackson Jarvis is an American artist who works in multiple mediums depicting abstract images ranging from works on papers to large scale sculptures. Much of her work deals with the intersections of materiality and nature.

According to her artist statement,

My work explores issues of conservation and our relationship to natural materials and landscapes. I draw uncommon analogies between disparate forms, objects and materials to construct narratives of real and imagined landscapes. My memory and enchantment with nature spring from early encounters in the southern landscape of my childhood. I grew up in rural Virginia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This landscape is indelibly inscribed in my mind’s eye giving consciousness to feelings, ideas, and perceptions of scale, stories, familial knowledge and memories of a distinctive southern place. The sticks, stones and red clay of the southern landscape travel with me in my work. I explore the energy in materials, their emanating auras, textures and sources of power. Stories humans tell are narratives of survival, identity, power, success, and failure, they are stories of origins and creation that reach into ancestry and simultaneously extend a path and direction to future generations.

I am interested in ethno biology, ecosystems and cultural identity. These concerns are translated within the context of urban and rural spaces. The energy and verve of memorable Southern environments still informs my work. I am interested in forces that bind inanimate and animate objects in symbiotic relationships that influence life and define our place on Earth.


Martha Jackson Jarvis, Black Woman Artists, African-American Woman Artists
(Free Spirits II, Mixed-media drawing including black walnut ink,
watercolor, oil, wax, raw pigment, collage, and photo transfer)

Martha Jackson Jarvis, Black Woman Artists, African-American Woman Artists
(Autumn, Mixed-media drawing including black walnut ink, watercolor, oil, wax,
raw pigment, collage, and photo transfer)

Martha Jackson Jarvis, Black Woman Artists, African-American Woman Artists
(Spores, Mixed-media drawing including black walnut ink, watercolor,
oil, wax, raw pigment, collage, and photo transfer)