Marie B. Martelly’s paintings are based on miniature collages that she assembles with a gifted eye for composition, and then translates to a much larger scale on canvas. Her primary aim is to satisfy a fundamental aspiration for visual harmony, while simultaneously prodding the viewer to engage in a little bit of storytelling by imagining connections between the various elements of the images.
Finding harmony from disparate elements has always been essential to Ms. Martelly, because her own personal life is a happy collage of many places, races, and religions. Her mother is Québécoise; her father is American but his mother is French; her American husband’s mother is from Bangladesh, his father from Barbados. As the daughter of a US Air Force fighter pilot, Ms. Martelly has lived a nomadic lifestyle, residing in many different countries and states, a pattern that will continue since her husband is also an Air Force aviator. It is a lifestyle she cherishes, and she loves to share her experiences with new people she meets along the way.
Following her traveling lifestyle, Ms. Martelly’s paintings have taken residence in various galleries and exhibitions along the way: the Christopher Park Gallery in Greenville, South Carolina; the Nota Bene Gallery and the On the Road exhibition at McGill University in Montreal, Québec; a solo exhibition at the Firehouse Gallery in Del Rio, Texas. Some of her paintings have found a permanent home at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the portrait collection at J.L. Mann High School in Greenville, South Carolina, as well as in many private collections. The Friends of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation (USA) commissioned from Ms. Martelly a portrait of Mr. Nelson Mandela, which was offered to him in South Africa on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
Ms. Martelly teaches introductory art classes to home-schooled children through the Del Rio Council for the Arts and to adults through the Services Department of the Air Force, for which she was awarded the Director’s Award of Excellence. She founded and curated the first Greenville County School District High School juried Art Exhibit, which later became an integral part of Artisphere, the international arts fair of Greenville, South Carolina.
Ms. Martelly completed two years of college at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado with the intention of becoming a military doctor, but her passion for Art lead her to transfer to McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she graduated with a B.A. in Art History. She previously studied at the Greenville County Fine Arts Center in South Carolina.
Marie B. Martelly (née Marie Bibiane McLendon) was born in 1987 into an Air Force family in Newport News, Virginia. She has lived in many states, as well as in Germany and Canada. Ms. Martelly is fluent in French and has a working knowledge of Spanish. She currently resides at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, where her husband is a student pilot. They will soon move to Fort Rucker in Alabama for helicopter training.
