For Linda Martinello landscape is a means by which to synchronously engage with feeling, form, memory, and recall. Martinello's travels in Italy and Mexico over the past few years have resulted in a series of works on mylar that draw influences ranging from fresco painting to gestural abstraction. On-site, she creates a comprehensive record from photographs and journal notes, a process based in detailed visual diaries. Upon return to her studio, this documentation is used to heighten the powers of recall where past experience is summoned to renew and memory and interpretation take over. The visual detail and accuracy of the documentation become secondary to the recreation of the remembered sensation and authentication of Martinello's original experience of the land: something to be moved through and lived in, not merely beheld as landscape. Gesture is integral to this process as well; her spontaneous response to the physical act of mark-making guides the work as they progress, allowing them to retain the vitality and freshness of plein air painting.
Martinello was born in 1980 in Toronto where she lives and maintains a studio. She most recently completed postgraduate research studies in Florence, Italy with the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2006 and received her Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 2004. In her graduating year she was the recipient of the prestigious Dr. Annie Smith Scholarship, awarded by the Art & Art History Studio Art faculty. While in her undergraduate years she participated in the University of Toronto International Summer Programs, studying Contemporary Art and Politics at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico and Art and Architecture of the Medieval and Renaissance City: Tuscany and Umbria at the University of Siena, Italy. Martinello has participated in commercial and public exhibitions including Imagination at the Durham Art Gallery (2005), AAHLUMNIEX at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (2007), Sitescapes at Whippersnapper Gallery (2008), and Points of Departure at the Art Gallery of Peel (2009). Forum Romanum is her recent solo exhibition at Studio 301, Toronto (2009).
Martinello's work is located in private and corporate art collections including BMO Financial Group, TD Bank Financial Group and the Donovan Collection.
