Connecting Pieces, acrylic and mixed media on wood cradle board

Columbus, Ohio-based artist Marty Husted works in oil and mixed media, creating works of figurative art that take traditional landscape painting as a base, adding ethereal, abstracted, and occasionally fantastical elements.

Waterfall Play, oil on wood panel

I really enjoy the evolution of Marty’s work from our previous feature of her prismatic coloration. Her older works tended more toward a clear divide between realism and fantasy, with specific planes of pattern and color emerging on tree branches, in water, and in patches of land - a fascinating way of rendering natural elements, something like the illustrations of Danielle Scott. In her current works, however, Marty takes a more blended approach, expertly combining the real with the slightly unreal in terms of color and rendering so that the viewer has to search to find the root of the scene.

Marty's mixed media gallery on her portfolio website

The artist’s recent works featuring bodies of water, loosely rendered in oil paint, are particularly inviting. The use of color to describe shading and highlights is a technique that enhances the visual interest of these works, adding to the classic subject matter.  

Field of Lilies, oil on wood panel