Location : Rome, Italy
Profession / passion : Artist
Website : www.martaabbott.com
Instagram : @martaabbott

One Day is an ongoing project sparked by the Covid-19. In the days of isolation we would like to focus on what we do best; bringing people together. Read more about the project here.

We will be posting one new day of someones life every day until we run out of contributors. See our instagram stories to experience these peoples One Day in action.

A text, song or film that everyone should experience :
Transbluceny, Duke Ellington and Kay Davis

What is the story behind your profession/ passion?
I am the daughter of a painter and an only child so I spent many hours of my childhood drawing and painting alongside my mother in her studio as well as around her friends who were typically also part of the artworld in some way. Even then I was drawn to nature and to our interaction with it. As an adult, I also worked in floral design for some time, which strengthened my love of flowers both as material as a subject matter. When I committed fully to painting, I was still very connected to and inspired by the natural world, but I felt something was missing from my process.
I came upon the work of Jason Logan of Toronto Ink Company, who makes inks from organic and foraged materials. I was immediately taken with the qualities, properties and story of his colors and began using them in my own work. Over time, thanks to Jason and to a really special community of like-minded artists, experimenters, creators and kindred spirits, I started making my own inks as well. Through that process I was able to re-examine and develop my relationship with the natural world and how I want to communicate it. I see my work as a sort of ongoing collaboration between myself and the world around me.

How do you want people to react to your work / passion?
I describe what I do as investigations into the human experience of nature and beauty. My hope is to encourage people to see, observe and experience the world around them differently, to help them find beauty in the details, in the small, mundane and fleeting, especially within the natural world. To stop and appreciate the universe one can find in a single flower petal or the power of sunlight skipping through tree branches that are moving in the wind. I would like people to walk away with a greater ability to see, rather than look.

How has the current situation affected how you work?
It has cleared space for me to consider more carefully what I want to say and how I want to say it, thereby also freeing me to follow creative instincts I’d been hesitating to embrace fully. It has definitely been a challenge to keep working, but ironically it’s helped me move closer to where I’d like to go as an artist.

What is the most inspiring text you read recently?
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

Your greatest achievement?
My son, Oliver

Define what beauty means to you.
My answer to this could easily fill many pages but in the interest of brevity, I will say beauty is something that I understand it to be both incredibly personal and universal, which is part of its mystery and attraction. It is something that moves, touches and awakens in us something that recognizes the importance of pleasure, joy, wonder, fulfillment and even love. Beauty to me can be as loud as the extravagantly gilded interior of a baroque church or as quiet as moonlight casting nighttime shadows.

Function or form?
Form

Analog or digital?
Analog

Describe a smell that brings back memories to you.
Petrichor, the soft, earthy, fresh scent that rises into the air just before and after a rainfall. It makes me think of the many rainstarms I’ve watched move in from across the ocean in one of my most beloved places, Block Island, Rhode Island.

Your best trait?
I don’t know what I would consider my own best trait but I’ve always especially appreciated when others have told me they observe in me an ability to see the beauty in just about anything.

What traits do you treasure in other people?
Kindness, curiosity, enthusiasm, creativity, thoughtfulness.

What was the most defining moment in your life?
The moment my son was born. In part because of the immense transition and transformation becoming a mother involves, but also because it reinforced to me who I am, who I have always been and will continue to be.

Quality or quantity?
Quality

Who do you miss?
Right now, everyone, deeply. Whether they live up the street or on another continent. I miss my family the most.

How was your spiritual and religious upbringing and how did it shape you?
My parents were both raised in the christian tradition and we celebrated the holidays associated with that. The approach they chose, however, was to educate me about various religions and let me find my own path. I’m not a religious person at all but I do believe in exploring and cultivating my spirituality.

When was the last time you learned something new and what was it?
I’m working on learning to dye fabrics with natural dyes. It’s such a natural extension of what I already do (no pun intended) but it’s also very different in certain ways, so it’s both familiar and challenging.

Have you actively chosen to live in the city/town you live in?
Yes. I came here very much of my own free will, out of curiosity and the desire to try something new. Rome can be as challenging as it is beautiful and I have seriously considered moving away. Despite its complications though, Rome tends to finds its way into your heart when you’re not looking, and now it’s come to feel much more like home.

How do you relax?
At the moment finding ways to relax is proving a bit challenging! But I’d say music, meditation, or a long soak in the bath.

If you were forced to sit still for one month straight without pursuing your current profession, how would you spend your time?
I would start writing again or try to learn to compose music.

What does freedom mean to you?
It means having options, having the ability to choose for yourself. I also think it means to know you don’t need anyone or anything else to be whole (although I would say my son is now the one exception to this) and to move about the world and your life accordingly.

Should calm come from within or be facilitated by the environment?
Personally believe it must come from within. That said, the ability to create calm from within often comes with the help of others.

Marcel Proust said nothing exists within itself. Are we brought to life by way of contrast?
I love this question! My first thought was that living in this lockdown can sometimes feel like trying to exist within oneself. I would say I agree with Proust in that we understand who and what we are in part through identifying what we are not, whether it be through observation, conversation, reaction, or any other kind of interaction with anything outside ourselves. I don’t think we are brought to life exclusively by contrast but it certainly plays an important role.

Lastly, how do wish to see this current situation have a positive impact on our lives?
First I’d like to say I think it's so important to try and think of it this way. I’m almost afraid to speculate on it just yet, but I do hope that it will help all of us appreciate human relationships more deeply and to take fewer things for granted. I hope it causes us to live with more purpose, consideration and awareness, in regards to others, to ourselves and to the Earth. I also hope we remember all the ways we felt moved to help and support each other throughout this time and bring that into whatever day-to-day life looks like when it’s done.

One Day : Marta Abbott - Artist