“Once Upon a Time in Palestine,” a painting by Martha Ferris included in the member show at the Garrison Art Center that ends Sunday (Jan. 26), is pleasant enough: A woman tends to an olive tree with gnarled trunks set against a bright pink and yellow background.
Other works in the artist’s latest series are more ominous. The colors remain vibrant but the trees are on fire beneath a hazy orange sky and bear no fruit. Another piece in her Philipstown studio features dozens of silhouettes where people and animals migrate to the left of the frame against another flaming backdrop. Subjects walk, bicycle, ride in a tractor and push a wheelbarrow as a donkey pulls a cart.
“It’s hard to live in the world and not be political,” says Ferris (no relation).
Like many artists, Ferris often creates a series and, when tired of zigging, she zags. Her career features many media and subject matter switchbacks. In 2023, a solo show at Fischer Galleries in Jackson, Mississippi, her home state, featured bright, bucolic scenes around her hilltop home and garden in New York.
Beyond visual arts, Ferris pursued acting in Los Angeles, appearing in the film Monaco Forever and in episodes of L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues. She and her husband, writer Kos Kostmayer, lived on her family’s farm near Vicksburg for 28 years.
In 2018, after selling the place (which also inspired a series of paintings), the couple intended to move to New York City to be closer to family but thought they would get more value in the suburbs. The house they bought, “which needed a lot of work,” sits atop a ridge in Philipstown.
Adopting a grab-bag of styles and approaches, Ferris’s artistic statement relates her commitment “to a program of continuous experimentation and constant change.” In one corner of her studio, a black background with a pointillist image dabbed in white ink depicts Kostmayer. A close-up of a flower focuses more on texture than precision. In contrast, another painting in her foyer showcases the family farm with sharp detail.
The series depicting her home and environs is sunny and upbeat. One work, “The Bedroom,” looks askew in part because of its perspective (the burgundy floor seems to be tilted) and the contrast between the blue bed, an orange wall and a colorful rug. Even the glass-enclosed shower gets a painting, and there are lots of trees, flowers and shadows rendered in fine lines.
Ferris has achieved a degree of fame in the Magnolia state, receiving an award in the visual arts from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She also designed two mosaic splash pools at the Mississippi Museum of Art and several of her murals hang in public places around Vicksburg.
As another testament to her versatility, an installation at the McWillie School consists of acrylic and enamel on steel and seven panels for the Mill Street Project are made from fired porcelain on steel.
Other examples of artistic whipsawing include pastels, dyed fabric, monotype prints, encaustic wax paint creations and modernistic cityscapes featuring stark shapes and patterns.
Asked amid all that to define “the real Martha Ferris,” she pauses, then says: “I’m all of the above.”
For more of Ferris’s work, see marthaferris.com.