left: Please Someone Tell Him He's Got No Horse,
2006, wood, steel, rope & paint, 56x95x17"
center: Journey of a Saint, 2006, mixed media, 22x16"
right: Spindle Top, 2006, charcoal on tyvek, 101x83"
Martin Delabano's more familiar works are paintings and sculptures that present narratives of spiritual journeys undertaken by lanky pilgrims in the company of animals and monsters. Ladders, seashells and cups of steaming coffee are their frequent props. There is, in all these narratives, an understated insistence on the literalness of the journeys, where mystic truths might reveal themselves in both the sublime and the dopey elements. The journeys depicted by Delabano always had an optimistic core, as if the artist were at home in the fantastic worlds he showed.
Charles Dee Mitchell, Art in America
Selected Exhibitions:
Father and Son: Barney and Martin Delabano, Tyler Museum of Art,
Tyler, TX
Diverse Works, Houston, TX
Pensacola Museum, Pensacola, FL
Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
Tilden-Foley Gallery, New Orleans, LA
Alternative Museum, New York, NY
Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin, TX
Longview Art Museum, TX