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Martin's canvases are each inspired by a particular place that holds personal meaning for the artist. Most images depict locations in upstate New York, an area with which the artist has an intimate connection. There is a universality to the sites, however, and the artist believes they could be anywhere there are trees, rocks, and water. Martin says that he paints landscapes because they are eternal, and he intends his work to provide a meditative experience for the viewer.

A decided balance between warm and cool tones is evident in the works. Besides the seasonal associations of the paintings, it is the grey, brown, and white hues of New York City - where the artist lives - that enrich the palette of the recent landscapes. In the current work the tonality and color have been intensified into a richer, more vivid expression.

At first glance, the paintings appear as tranquil scenes. A closer look, however, reveals that the artist has deconstructed and re-assembled each work into both naturalistic and abstract passages. Some areas dissolve into abstractly painted surfaces. In the left panel of the recent triptych Thanksgiving, for instance, the autumn leaves are painted with great detail, in shades of yellow and brown, and the rocks dissolve into abstraction. The Persistence of Nature, 1999, is pictorially divided in half: a carefully rendered waterfall, in the upper half, dissolves below into a lushly painted body of water that flows out into the viewer's space.

Martin's previous shows at the Charles Cowles Gallery included works painted on topographical maps of upstate New York. The cartographer's lines became a part of the painted landscape image, or were allowed to stand alone as a related but disparate layer of visual information. Good Thursday, 1997, is a link to this earlier work. Instead of topographical maps, however, a grid of small affixed drawings provides the ground for a densely painted hillside of winter trees.

Doug Martin was born in Newton, Kansas, on December 10, 1947. After initially studying architecture, he received a B.F.A. degree in Painting from Kansas State University in 1971. By 1975, when he received his M.F.A. degree from the University of Nebraska, he was living in New York, and his new surroundings informed his painting in a different way, incorporating the architecture and palette of the city.

Martin created his first landscape painting in 1982, during the first of six summers spent as an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, the artists' retreat in Saratoga Springs, in upstate New York. Yaddo was to be a pivotal experience for Martin. While he had long been interested in the tradition of landscape painting, it was the beauty of the countryside near Yaddo - and the gift of time the residency provided - that inspired him to paint directly from nature. He has followed this direction in his work since then. His early landscapes were portable sized oils on canvas. Since 1990, when the size of his canvases increased, he has worked indoors. Each work begins, however, with a drawing done directly from nature.