“Latimer’s paintings create spaces in which thought, memory, and perception can unfold. Through ambiguity, atmosphere, and expanses of negative space, meaning emerges gradually through the act of looking.”
Samantha Shellard
Martina Latimer: Between Perception and Reflection
Samantha Shellard
Victor Turner famously described liminality as a condition of being "betwixt and between," suspended between established states of identity and understanding.¹ Martina Latimer's paintings inhabit precisely such a threshold space, operating between perception and reflection, presence and absence, emergence and dissolution. Rather than presenting fixed narratives or stable representations, her works remain deliberately unresolved, inviting viewers to dwell within uncertainty. Expanses of negative space dominate the pictorial field, functioning not as emptiness but as active sites of possibility. Through restrained compositions, subtle chromatic transitions, and shifting atmospheric forms, Latimer creates images that resist immediate comprehension and instead reward sustained attention.
The paintings' visual language is characterised by an ongoing oscillation between appearance and disappearance. Botanical fragments, traces of human presence, and fleeting gestures emerge from layered surfaces before receding again into ambiguity. This rhythm of revelation and concealment creates an interstitial space in which perception remains fluid rather than fixed. Blur, translucency, cropping, and attenuated tonal shifts disrupt habits of rapid looking, encouraging viewers to engage more slowly with the work. In this sense, the paintings function less as representations of a particular place or moment than as environments of contemplation, asking viewers to inhabit the space between recognition and uncertainty.
Central to this experience is a mode of engagement akin to daydreaming. Rather than offering definitive meaning, the works establish conditions in which memory, sensation, and imagination circulate freely. The expansive negative spaces become sites of psychological and perceptual openness, allowing thought to wander while remaining attentive to the subtleties of the painted surface. This process can be understood as a form of mental scaffolding, whereby meaning is gradually assembled through observation, recollection, and associative thinking. Viewers are invited neither to decode nor resolve the image but to participate actively in its unfolding, constructing significance through their own perceptual and emotional encounters.
This emphasis on active looking aligns with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological understanding of perception as an embodied and relational experience.² Meaning does not reside solely within the artwork itself but emerges through the encounter between object and viewer. Latimer's paintings create the conditions for such encounters by foregrounding ambiguity, suspension, and openness. Negative space becomes as significant as depicted form, generating intervals of pause that heighten awareness of perception itself. The works produce a distinctive sense of altered temporality, slowing the viewer's experience and encouraging reflection within a culture increasingly dominated by speed and immediacy.
Ultimately, Latimer transforms absence into a generative force. Her paintings do not seek resolution; instead, they embrace the productive uncertainty that characterises liminal experience. By holding viewers within a state of suspension, the works encourage a deeper awareness of perception, memory, and attention. Meaning emerges not through certainty but through encounter, unfolding gradually within the spaces between seeing and imagining, knowing and wondering. It is within this threshold state that the enduring power of Latimer's practice resides.
Footnotes
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969), 94-95.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Landes (London: Routledge, 2012), lxxiii-lxxxiv.
Bibliography
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge, 2012.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969.
van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
QUOTE
“Latimer’s paintings are less about representation than about creating conditions in which thought, memory, and perception unfold.
Her works operate as a form of mental scaffolding, supporting thought without directing it.
Restrained imagery, atmospheric shifts, and interstitial voids create spaces for contemplation, allowing meaning to emerge through sustained attention rather than immediate comprehension.”
Samantha Shellard