Visual Art – New Orleans
Olivia Leigh Martin was born in New Orleans in 1990. She was profoundly affected by Prospect 1, the citywide New Orleans triennial which had its flagship exhibition during her senior year of high school, and decided to pursue study in Studio Art at Dartmouth College. During her undergraduate career, she continued investigating what had struck her like a lightning bolt at Prospect 1: the intersection of place, memory, and a future mediated by nostalgia. She received a grant in 2012 to spend three months making on-site paintings in the Louisiana wetlands, exploring the emotional and psychological ramifications of a landscape quickly disappearing due to coastal erosion, and soon to exist only in memory. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 2013 with a double major in Studio Art and English, and graduated from Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts in 2015 with an M.F.A. in Studio Art and Painting. Her thesis, entitled "The Alchemy of Touch," explored the primacy of touch over sight in the art of painting. She currently lives and works in New Orleans, LA.