ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Martin's self-actualization, with a particular focus on the period from 1967 onwards, after she left New York after a decade of living there, and began a seven-year-long hiatus from painting. Indeed, it could be said that O'Keeffe offered a model to other artists of how to live and work in isolation in New Mexico, yet still remain connected to the New York art world. It seems that being in or near water gave Martin a great sense of freedom, and although she lived most of her adult life in land-locked places, such as New York and later New Mexico, rivers and oceans remained sources of joy and inspiration to her. Martin's new work bore no traces of her well-known grids, but focused entirely on vertical stripes, rendered in a palette of pale blues, pinks, and whites, luminously bright in comparison to the muted hues of her earlier grid paintings.
