Cristina Martinez: Get Lost With Me
Join us here at NOW Magazine as we interview Christina Martinez, a contemporary artist from Los Angeles who is making a name for herself through her empowering paintings and fashion design skill that celebrates the culture and history of Black and Brown people. Her art is currently being featured in Band of Vice’s latest exhibit: C11H17NO3, or Mescaline.
Christina Martinez
Cristina Martinez is a contemporary artist who is collaborating with Nordstrom to release an apparel and home collection based on artwork that celebrates the stories of Black and Brown people. With a strong foundation in the fashion industry and a notable career as a contemporary artist, Martinez is combining her experience with apparel with her passion for sketching and painting in order to express herself through art. This collaboration features her pieces “No Rain, No Flowers,” “A Planted Seed, Grows,” and “Live to Bloom.”
“No Rain, No Flowers” is a piece Martinez created in honor of the cyclical nature of life wherein the good cannot exist without hardship. “A Planted Seed, Grows” is about the importance of taking care of oneself in order to grow. “Live to Blossom” embodies the idea that the process and the journey of an experience is fundamental to the person you become.
With a natural inner calling toward creativity and fashion, Martinez is able to use art to express herself. Her art has allowed her to find a way to become the truest version of herself possible. Due to a drive to continuously create and experiment with new ideas, she enjoys the organic evolution of her creative style.
“I follow wherever my heart, gut, and mind take me, it’s not a particular style I have,” writes Martinez in an interview with NOW Magazine LA. “Whatever I am feeling that day ends up on the canvas.”
Asides from her work with Nordstrom, Martinez is also working with the Los Angeles art space Band of Vices. Martinez and Band of Vices prove to be the perfect match as they are both strong advocates of inclusion, diversity, and the amplification of historically underrepresented voices. Band of Vices opened an exhibit on September 18 called C11H17NO3, named after the hallucinogenic drug Mescaline. In accordance with the theme, Martinez created a whimsical and imaginative piece that depicts the idea of being so connected and inspired by nature and the environment around you that you become a part of their journey.
Martinez gains inspiration from many different sources, but she remains steadfast in the messages she wants to convey. With a passion for spreading sentiments of self-love and kindness, Martinez practices what she preaches with immense self-awareness of her actions. She wants to reflect these messages of kindness in the way she loves her family, especially her children, and in her urgent passion for changing the world. When she is painting, she channels this drive for spreading kindness and acceptance into telling stories that depict her own life and emotions. She also aims to use her platform as an artist to spotlight Black and Brown people, especially women, as often as she can. Her piece for the Mescaline exhibit does just that through a painting that encourages Black and Brown individuals to water themselves, grow, and bloom in their life journeys.
Get Lost With Me
In her Band of Vices exhibit piece, Martinez created a painting titled “Get Lost with Me.” As one of her experimental pieces, she was pleased when it took on the life of something more powerful and meaningful than she thought it would. It is the largest oil piece she has done to date, and it served as a wonderful reminder to her of the joy she gets from creating art.
“The painting captures the idea of vibrating at the highest frequency possible, vibrating so high that people have no choice but to be enveloped in your energy,” Martinez continues. “I remember being a young girl reading gardening books and imagining the flowers and plants as people; I saw my friends, family, and even myself in these living things. This piece depicts the idea of being so connected and inspired by nature and the environment around you that you become a part of their journey.”
