Marta Gilbert

Marta Gilbert, born in Bentonville, Arkansas, started drawing when she was just three years old. Marta says, according to her mother, her first pictures were of upside down horses' heads. Having the mind of an artist, her mother motivated her to pursue a career as a concert pianist, for which she studied until her early twenties. She also studied violin and drums, but Marta's heart is with her paints. Her paternal aunt encouraged her painting and gave Marta her first set of oils when she was eight. She sold her first piece when she was a teenager, a painting of a native Tarahumara woman who lived in Chichauhua. Although her art is essentially self-taught, her talent was advanced during three years of study at the Famous Artists School in Wesport, Connecticut.

Besides acrylic, she uses her vast talents in oil, clay spirit masks and painting on indigenous ceremonial drums as well as drawings in pencil, charcoal, pen and ink.

Whether depicting the sentiment of the Huichol, Chiapas, Zapatas, or the emotion of warriors or the vitality of a famous bandita, Marta translates their nature with perfection. Like the artist herself her paintings reflect spirituality, honour, and mystique. Gilbert creates works that interpret the strength, energy and dignity of these noble people. She paints Native Americans because their blood runs in her veins (Osage and Cherokee), and she feels a direct connection with them. "My soul is Indian" Marta states. Her world is populated by stunning men and women with dark, perfect skin and along, shiny, black hair. "My rendition may be romantic but the fact is that I find Indian faces extremely beautiful the bone structure, the color...." Yet there is also a touch of sadness to the beautiful faces she paints, as if generations of cultural suffocation are being projected.

Gilbert is perhaps Puerto Vallarta's best known visual artist, an internationally celebrated painter known for her piercing portraits of indigenous people, soulful portrayals of the native people who live closest to the land both in reality and her dreams. The landscapes her characters occupy are as important as their visages - adobe villages, beaches, dry gulches, mountain plateaus, fertile fields and green valleys. The mountainside jungles and wave-fringed ocean shores of Puerto Vallarta have been Marta Gilbert's landscape since 1971; she has witnessed the metamorphosis of Puerto Vallarta from a quiet seaside village to traffic congested city in just these short years.

Gilbert's award winning paintings have been exhibited in over 40 solo-exhibits and she has participated in over 115 collective exhibitions. Well known for over 300 commissioned works, her works hang in collections world wide. Some collections are displayed in galleries in San Miguel, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Paris and Puerto Vallarta.

The Print of Marta’s that is in our possession hangs in the Mujeres Azules suite and is entitled ‘Orange Flower’.