Lilian Martinez: Women and Dogs

Women & Dogs is comprised of colorful paintings set in open-air gardens and verdant public spaces featuring women who embody what Lilian Martinez refers to as “boundless femininity”—a way of moving through the world with comfort and ease, finding creativity and care in the simplest of acts. Untethered from obligations to others, Martinez’ ladies practice mindful indulgence, follow their intuition, and live their best lives. With generous curves and radiant brown skin, these femme figures visualize their pleasures before manifesting them into reality—they stop at a farmers’ market before picnicking in the park, take their dogs on long riverside walks, make calls on a banana phone, bring water to their partner at an outdoor restaurant, share fruit with their friends barefoot in the garden, and protect each other’s peace.

Central to Lilian Martinez’ exhibition are three pairs of paintings that function both as diptychs and also as stand-alone works. They are connected visually and conceptually; one by blue water flowing through life-giving streams, another through an open-air community space that Lilian Martinez describes as an “outdoor third space…a space that requires nothing of you to enter it or to stay,” and the third through concepts of boundless femininity and womanhood. Each vignette offers a quotidian narrative with unexpected details—a glass of carrot juice with lipstick on the rim, calla lilies growing in the park, ripe bananas hanging from a tree, sliced papaya, watermelon, and a pineapple balanced on a large brown and white cow, pink Tabi Mary Janes kicked off in the grass, and a lime nieve with a pink spoon awaiting eating. Embodying a collective desire for brown women to occupy space peacefully, Martinez’ paintings proffer positive representations of bodies like her own as they celebrate inclusivity and classlessness.