Review: James Martin's weird, wondrous works at Foster/White

James Martin's art is like bluegrass music — the upbeat tempo can disguise a forlorn story. In Martin's signature paintings — which he's been creating and tinkering with for over three decades — cartoonlike characters, lively colors, swirling paint and quick, quivering lines create an exuberance that is tempered by a subtle sense of degradation and dejection.

And therein lies the genius: His art would be depressing if it weren't so joyfully zany, and it would be goofy if it weren't slightly melancholic.

The 82-year-old Martin uses a sure hand to create his weirdly whimsical images of big-breasted, hoochie women, slightly creepy circus performers, and shoes that look like they're lifted from Depression-era hoboes. These figures inhabit the works but don't ever seem to fully connect with each other, often kept separate by voids of background. In his latest works, there's a recurring motif: Women, or mermaids, recline on bikes, recalling the old joke about a woman needing a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

Foster/White Gallery holds an annual show of Martin's work and it's tempting to wander down the "What's New?" path, particularly because Martin uses such recognizable figures and symbols, subtracting and adding to his repertoire over the decades. There are some new items here: giant strawberries, combustion engines and yellow submarines.

But, for me, the continuity in Martin's work is more important. The worlds that Martin creates in his art are timeless, floating across (rather than receding deeply into) the surface of his paintings. These worlds mimic, but are fantastically separated from, our realities just like a circus, one of Martin's motifs.

But there's also an old-timey feel to some symbols: claw-foot bathtubs, clunky machinery, trucks and bicycles, the old shoes. The crinkled brown paper that serves as his canvas reinforces the feeling of Depression-era scrappiness. Born in Everett, educated at the University of Washington, and influenced by artists like Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, Martin is like a down-home, Pacific Northwest version of Marc Chagall.

The characters and symbols are clearly personal for Martin — and he includes many self-portraits — but Martin's reticent explanations for his iconography are often as mystifying and metaphorical as his paintings. According to his artist's statement for the show, the fascination with strawberries came out of the wondrous fact that strawberries have their seeds on the outside. From there, it's up to us to speculate about connections with his work: ripeness, regeneration, decay?

Mona Lisa also appears in many of these works. We all know Mona Lisa — she's a shared symbol, an icon of fine art, culture — but she also is a symbol of solitude and what we don't know about the interior lives of others.

As I'm writing these words, sitting alone in a coffee shop, a little boy toddles over to show me a little windup toy — a yellow submarine — reminding me of the quirky magic in James Martin's art. Our playfulness, weaknesses, solitude and desire for connection are conjured up and allowed to interact across his paintings, on bicycles, on roller coasters, in bathtubs.

According to the Beatles, we all live in a yellow submarine, but in James Martin's world, the submarine is often stranded in an old-fashioned bathtub. It becomes a ridiculous symbol: a vehicle of unity and possibility, cut off from the vast sea, incapable of getting anywhere, but taking us along for the ride.