Paris-born Martine Jardel received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from San Francisco State University. She lived and worked in Yemen, Columbia and Canada before settling in California. "I believe the experience in different climates, landscapes, people and cultures are a nutrient source of my art. My work starts with gestures and no preset ideas in my mind. The Space serie paintings show a process of sedimentation. Thin layers of paint let the light seep out from within the painting. The effect of color transparencies, light and dark, helps create a mood or an atmospheric quality which enhances the reading of marks, lines and shapes as loose depictions of elements in nature. But ultimately they are traces, remnants of images with no fixed identity. I like to see my paintings as spaces of ambiguity inviting the viewer to a patient contemplation".


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