Martin Willis
Website:
martin.willis.artist
Martin Willis
James Stewart
Scarlett Johansson
Sidhu Moosewala
Biography
What is the artists mission and vision
Martin J Willis is a self-taught portrait artist from Coventry. His artwork is a passionate exploration of faces, capturing the essence of his subjects through playful use of colour, textures, and mixed media.
Martin exudes an unwavering creativity and energy to his work, embracing boundless possibilities to his artistic expression. His vision is to broaden the narrative of stories captured within art, blending traditional and contemporary techniques, mediums, and subjects to appeal to a wider, more diverse audience.
Central to his artistic philosophy is an endeavour to make affordable, collectable artwork for any budget, creating work that resonates and is accessible to a wide audience.
Martin intricately weaves his creativity and engineering skills with a vision for celebrating other artists’ contributions to popular culture. His paintings capture famous faces and many unsung heroes behind the scenes - writers, directors, photographers, whose faces may be less known but contributions to creative communities equally profound.
inspiration
What is the artist’s inspiration
Martin’s artistic style is inspired by frequent trips to the National Portrait Gallery. He is always drawn to the artworks created by Henry Lamb (especially his portrait of Stanley Spencer), Lucian Freud, Jenny Seville, and Egon Schiele.
He also draws inspiration from artistic figures across the globe, as well as his local artist community. Martin seeks to honour the artists that inspire him, celebrating both the visible faces of popular culture and the faces of artists and creators who remain behind the scenes - writers, directors, playwrights, musicians, photographers, and more, weaving a rich tapestry of portraits that celebrate the full spectrum of artistic expression.
medium
An engineer by trade, Martin’s distinctive style blends use of acrylics, spray paint, and his specialist skills in CAD design and CNC water-jet cutting for precision stencilling and engraving.
His portraits come in all shapes and sizes, however Martin is happiest creating large scale works on mixed media canvases. Some recent commissions have been painted and engraved on large sheets of aluminium, copper, porcelain, and plywood.
Martin combines traditional and contemporary techniques and mediums with cutting edge technology to enhance the precision of his portraits and reduce time and materials used on each piece. His approach aims to reduce the cost of producing his works and ultimately the cost for any art collector.
Martin’s exhibited works feature stencilled, spray painted portraits on Birch Plywood, embellished with acrylic paint. Martin has begun expanding this collection to commissions of personalised portraits available in a selection of colour schemes and mixed media canvases.