What the Trees Have Seen” is Martha Jackson Jarvis’s first solo museum exhibition since 1996. Her expressive mixed-media paintings flood the galleries with vibrant sweeps of color, which are accompanied by deep solid earth tones and generous swaths of black-walnut ink—the compositions practically dance across the galleries’ walls.
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Grief is over powering, so I have decided to open my studio to let in those who can still smile and celebrate life.
Hope you can visit.... I could use a good smile...
Martha Jackson Jarvis
BALTIMORE, MD (March 6, 2023)—This May, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will open an exhibition of new works by Washington, DC-based artist Martha Jackson Jarvis that explores her great-great-great-great-grandfather Luke Valentine’s service as a free Black militiaman in the American Revolution. The cycle of 13 abstract paintings from her Adaptation: Luke Valentine’s Sonic Journey series are produced at grand scale on 300-pound sheets of paper to evocatively trace her ancestor’s movements on foot across shifting, and at times treacherous, terrain.
The paintings capture Jackson Jarvis’s distinct approach to layering her own foraged walnut ink with watercolor, oil, and acrylic paint, and collaged strips of paper to produce formally and conceptually complex works. The exhibition, which also includes smaller paintings on paper inspired by the meditative form of the mandala, reveals the experiences of one individual from within little-discussed African American narratives of U.S. history, adding nuance and perspective to our understanding of the origins of this country.
Inspired by family research into her great-great-great-great grandfather Luke Valentine’s service as a free Black militiaman in the American Revolution, Martha Jackson Jarvis has created mixed-media works that imaginatively retrace his journey from Virginia to South Carolina during the Revolutionary War. The result is a tour de force in abstract painting with 13 grandly scaled works on paper, and a focused group of smaller works inspired by the meditative form of the mandala.
Jackson Jarvis imagines her ancestor’s movements on foot across shifting terrains—venturing from home into thickets, waterways, weather, and bugs—through a landscape at once treacherous and verdant. She continues this body of work while meditating on the emotions from bravery to fear and serenity that Valentine may have felt on his journey during the Revolutionary War.
Co-curated by Leila Grothe, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Cecilia Wichmann, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, and Jessica Bell Brown, Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art
