Sherry Strickland Martin
Bio
Sherry is an award winning artist from the Hammock Coast of South Carolina specializing in watercolor and mixed media. Sherry earned her BA in Studio Art from Limestone College in 1982. As a producing fine artist, she began her career in galleries, juried exhibitions, doing commissioned watercolor figure portraits/ landscapes in oils & watercolors and teaching workshops. She has done contract work in fabric design, illustration, furniture design while living in GA as well as handpainted wall paper and murals for interior design clients after a move to Hilton Head Island for 16 years. Sherry incorporated her art business in 2001 as she added more commercially related artwork by way of Art Licensing. The artwork and designs produced for housewares and lifestyle manufactures include: dinnerware, note pads, woven tapestry items, fabric design, blankets, prints and a host of other products. Products featuring her work were sold in retail markets across the country: Kirklands, Target, StienMart to name a few. Sherrys landscape artwork has graced the cover of Colonial Home Magazine where the interior design team she worked with won the Silver medal for Southern Living Magazine for a home in Beaufort, SC. Her figure portraits commissioned have been displayed by the Cinnicinati Bengals, and numerous public and private collectors alike. Today, Sherry and her husband reside in Murrells Inlet, SC where she retired from a 17 year stint teaching Painting and Design at the high school level and is in her home studio full time. She is a Signature Member in Excellence with the SC Watermedia Society. Her most recent undertaking was a solo exhibition "Roots Run Deep", at the Burroughs & Chapin Myrtle Beach Art Museum of her watercolors, mixed media's and oils. This exhibit focused on Sherry's love of the Lowcountry life, its people and landscape. "In its planning I realized it went much deeper than that. This exhibit was also a reflection my life coming full circle, a return to making art that reflects what nurtures my soul, the physical return to family near, that salt air, pluff mud and the sweet smell of oyster beds that never leave you, but bring you home again, where roots run deep".
Sherry is once again exhibiting, offering her work via originals, print editions, licensing and commissioned work for sale.
Artist Statement
As primarily a watercolorist, I am captivated by the luminosity and fluidity of color washes on the white paper. Though my work is highly representational in subject matter, it is the play of light & shadow; the textures, patterns and mood they create on a subject that usually draws me in, making the ordinary extraordinary. Nothing to me is more beautiful than the color and textures that light and shadow create. I use these qualities, as well as the subject, to tell the story at hand. The same holds true with my work in oils, however the brushwork adds an additional excitement all of its own.
My mixed media work is my alter ego, so to speak. They allow me to let loose, experiment, stretch my creativity, and get messy. The process is always a joy filled challenge, not only in application of mediums, but also in the thought process of what I want to say/express through the piece I'm working on.