Martine Jardel’s paintings show a process of sedimentation, thin layers of paint combined with a cold wax process lets the light seep out from within the painting. The effect of color transparencies, light and dark, help create a mood or an atmospheric quality which enhances the reading of marks, lines and colors as loose depictions of elements in nature. Recurrent shapes, a tree or a body? Sky or water? Ultimately they are but traces, remnants of images with no fixed identity.

The artist was born in Paris and earned her Bachelor of Fine Art in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and her Master of Fine Art, also in painting at San Francisco State University. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and one woman shows including two in Paris in 2003 and 2005. She currently lives and maintains a studio in the Bay Area.