I'm Carolina Martinez, and my passions are creating visual art, taking photos, and writing poetry and essays.  I identify as Latina and bilingual, raised in two cultures-- Uruguayan from my father and American from my mother.   Although most of my life I lived in the United States, I currently live in Uruguay.  

I have been an artist ever since I could hold a pencil, learning through images, expressing myself with feelings rather than facts. I'm detailed, emotional, deliberate, and passionate.  To me, life is for making meaning and connection.  

My career for thirty years  focused on teaching children, but during school breaks, weekends, and now in retirement, I devote myself to creative projects.  ​Art was by far my favorite subject to teach and guide.  I loved helping children cultivate their own natural expressive style.  Over my life, I decided to not be bound by photo-realistic manner, preferring to work in a graphic novel or children's book illustration style. Most of my artistic training has been drawing and painting, which affects the way I layer and add depth and detail to my pieces.  As a child I was captivated by color,  starting with looking at the Chicano history murals, in  San Francisco's Mission district.  I gravitate toward placing vibrant colors in  harmonious ways to evoke joy, comfort, and vivaciousness in my work.  I was first exposed to art museums the year I was seven, opening up a world of inspiration from other people's perspectives and techniques.   I'm always on the search for new techniques to try.  

Here are some artists that have changed the way I work:

Gaughin used combinations of colors shocking and bold, along with an illustrative style to portraiture, with female forms more beautiful curved and plump.

Henry Sugimoto's paintings were like illustrations in children's books.  Although two dimensionally flat in nature, the compositions were filled with action.

Matisse's forms that were not limited to realism, instead the feeling meant much more.

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Roger Shimomura depicted Japanese internment, in his Minidoka series, through differing points of view.  This caused me to consider showing more than one perspective in my work.

Vincent Van Gogh's motion and textures were created with all sorts of lines.

Cezanne' used brush texture marks to create form as he laid out his compositions, filling them with color.

Estelle Ishigo"s work delivered emotional punch with pencil drawings that did not need color to tell the message. This inspired me to think about the facets hues of black, gray, and white can add to a composition.