My inspiration began with music. In the 1990s, hip-hop was built on jazz samples—Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Tribe Called Quest, Hieroglyphics, and others. Those fragments of older recordings led me back to the source: Coltrane, Monk, Parker, Miles, and Ornette Coleman.

Coltrane’s Blue Train—its 1997 reissue—was pivotal. The cover alone revealed a musician as an artist, and his sound opened pathways into both music and visual expression. Hip-hop DJs layered samples the same way Romare Bearden built collages; these were indirect influences that shaped how I think about form.

My work explores how sound becomes visible, how a musician’s physical action corresponds to a painter’s mark. To unite the composer with the composition, I translate themes, gestures, and improvisations into line and form.

I paint improvisationally—each line responding to the previous one. Lines evolve into edges, borders, shadows, and grooves. Color supports the structure, while forms become symbolic echoes of musicians, instruments, and motion. The paintings lean toward a cubistic sensibility, where abstraction becomes a visual analogue to musical ideas.

Ultimately, my work bridges disciplines through the spirit of making—following how the mind moves, how ideas flow, and how sound and form reflect one another.

—Martel Chapman, November 2025