Martin Facey

Professor, Painting & Drawing
Department of Art & Art History
University of New Mexico

Biographical Information:
Martin Facey - born, raised, and educated in the American West - is among a generation of artists who, while acknowledging the primacy of a European-to-New Your legacy, is also likely to invoke equally powerful influences from the Far East, the Pacific Cultures, the Hispanic New World nations, Native American tradition and the newest visions of the WEst: television and motion picture arts.

Originally a student of film-making at UCLA, Facey was lured into the art department by the teaching impact of such painters as William Brice, R.B. Kitaj, Lee Mullican, and Richard Diebenkorn. Two subsequent graduate degrees and a series of one-person exhibitions at Santa Monica's Tortue Gallery established Facey as a critical and commercial success.

Both the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have awarded Facey's work with rare Single Artists Fellowships in Painting. In 1983, he left his longtime teaching post at Santa Monica College to join his mentors at UCLA as a visiting professor.

After repeated and nourishing trips to the American Southwest, Martin Facey moved to New Mexico to join the faculty at the University of New Mexico. New Mexico's intense cultural collision of Native American, Hispanic and Anglo traditions - combined with its awe-inspiring physical beauty and unmatched quality of light-provided fertile for Facey's paintings.

Martin Facey currently lives and works along the Rio Grande River basin at his home/studio near Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico. His newest work seeks to synthesize a new pictorial language rooted in multiple landscape traditions.