Working from Shia and Sufi tradition in gouache, watercolor, and gold.
Work
Statement
I oscillate between a drunkenness on divine love, a silliness, and an obsessive veneration of resistance. While these transient states are not experienced concurrently, they exist together in my work.
Nathaniel Martin is a self-taught painter whose work draws on the Persian miniature tradition and the Slavic icons of his own heritage. He left medical school for hawza, traditional Shia religious study, and is drawn to the more esoteric corners of Islam. He paints in seclusion from a cabin in the forest and continues to work in psychiatric research, with a particular focus on disruptions of the mind's eye.