Imagined Places: Drawings by Ilyana Martinez — Introduced by Kim Aubrey

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Ilyana Martinez is a Toronto artist and designer who grew up in Pittsburgh and Mexico City. She uses watercolour in untraditional ways, sometimes mixing it with gouache and ink, to make fantastical drawings, full of whimsy and hope. Martinez says that imagination “plays a really big role because I don’t really plan the drawings ahead of time. Occasionally, I’ll begin with a sketch or use diagrams of architecture and plant forms, but mostly it’s memory and imagination. I spend time looking at plants, trees, berries, rocks, but they become slightly altered on paper.” She sees her imagery as “a language I’ve developed for these plants and buildings in my head.”

—Kim Aubrey

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Temporal Relationship

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Hovering Points

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Strata

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Symbiosis

Red Sky

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Replica

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Whorl

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—Ilyana Martinez

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Ilyana Martinez graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design in 2002, with a major in Drawing and Painting. Previous studies include a Bachelor of Design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and an exchange program at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in the UK. She has been involved in design projects with prominent museums in Canada and abroad, such as The Manitoba Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, and the Glenbow Museum in Canada, and the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City.

Ilyana’s work has been exhibited in galleries around the world. She has won numerous awards and grants for her drawings and paintings, among these an award from the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, an Honourable Mention in Watercolour from the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, and the WO Forsyth Award from the Ontario College of Art & Design. In 2011, she participated in a multidisciplinary art residency in Rudele, Croatia.

Along with Nahum Flores and Erik Jerezano, Martinez is a member of the  Z’otz* collective. Their collaborative work is currently featured in the exhibition Hourglass Continent at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario, March 3 to June 3. The artist photos are by Erik Jerezano.

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Photo by Erik Jerezano

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