Publication Includes Work By Gig Harbor's Martha Reisdorf On List Of Ten Best Abstract Paintings

Local artist Martha Reisdorf continues to garner acclaim for her abstract paintings.

Recently, Daniel Ferris of the "It's Only Art?" blog named the Gig Harbor artist's piece, "Aufnsteig 122a," one of the ten best abstract paintings:

Seeing the array of well balanced and very colorful abstract paintings at Martha’s website is well worth the visit.  Here is also an interesting PBS video production on Martha the artist and her personal and non objective style of art composition that you will enjoy.

Reisdorf - A Steilacoom native whose work has been displayed everywhere from California to Seattle to Bainbridge Island to the Harbor History Museum - wrote this about herself:

A severe head trauma in 1990  propelled me from a career in financial law into an abstract world. Consequences of surgery left me with skewed vision, loss of balance and depth perception.  What had been reality became  distortion and confusion.  I remembered the world heretofore but where was it?  To escape the tedium of rehab I enrolled in art school where my art professors taught me to embrace my limitations, to create art within my personal arena.  I’d been given a ‘gift’.

Free of restraints and inhibitions associated with reality and unable to focus my eyes to form a composition, I allow the paint itself to be my eyes and finds its own expression.   I begin by aimlessly gathering globs of varying colored paint onto a palette knife, applying it randomly in staccato strokes onto a canvas.  I repeat this multiple times, applying paint over paint, until the collective layers meld into a mosaic fusion of colors,  lines and shapes.  I rely on color placement to develop a composition,  then applying a glob of a specific color where the composition seems weak to me.  To reach conclusion of a composition it must achieve ‘balance’ within my visual arena.  To achieve this, areas of a work are weighted.

Congratulations, Martha, on building such an impressive resume.

Click here to visit Reisdorf's website.