Welcome to the Bettie Morton Gallery

Martin Masterson speaks of his art and being an artist

"I suppose when everything is said and done, making art is about self discovery and a somewhat selfish act, it is a means of identity and of placing ones self in the world.

The most challenging thing for me as an artist is the conviction that I am making something that will be relevant in today’s society.

The search for an image that conveys such sentiments without compromise is of equal importance.

The urge to investigate the material and to allow it to manifest its own nature, the doubt and the exhilaration that one encounters while engaged in the making of a piece of work are of equal importance.

In the work that I make I try in all sincerity to allow these things to be visible within the painting. The elements that in the end go into making a piece of art are numerous and the artist should be aware of them and should not necessarily be the dictator of them.

It is hard in a way to clear the mind of the images that invade our lives today and the artist is no exception to this, it is equally hard to avoid these things from surreptitiously creeping into the work making it moribund and listless.

In consequences to all of this, the artist has to be original, to be the conduit of his own realisations, to allow their work to speak for itself without the prop of story telling or some erroneous message and supposed meaning."