Eddie Martinez’s drawings and paintings are assemblages of reoccurring characters, objects and motifs that loosely recreate everyday life into chaotic and exhilarating events. Interiors may feature peaked, colorfully shingled roofs, while landscapes are littered with patted plants and bowls of fruit. Those objects also appear in more straightforward still-life paintings that pulsate with the energy of modern masters of the genre, such as Marsden Hartley. Though his style is unabashedly untrained, a wide range of comparisons from Picasso to comics to folk art assert themselves.

Martinez’s practice of constant drawing, an obsessive recording of life, provides his oeuvre’s foundation, one characterized by a vibrancy and energy that can barely be contained. The paintings substantiate his visions in expanded scale and palette. For all, his process is instinctual, idiosyncratic and self-assured, professing an outlook that is in turn genuine, optimistic and hilarious.