When Art Meets Big Agriculture

In 2017 artist Narsiso Martinez stopped painting.

His career almost came to a halt before it even began, when he was faced with his biggest artistic dilemma. His work, he thought, was too pretty.

“It’s hard for me to see something as pretty when the subject that I represent—the agricultural industry—is not pretty. I stopped painting in an attempt to reach that point.” He wanted to find an approach to his artwork that would most truthfully embody the not-so-pretty realities of his subject matter.

Hoping to capture the gritty nature of agricultural field work, Martinez began creating primarily black-and-white portraits with charcoal and gouache. And instead of using canvas, he began painting each piece onto cardboard produce boxes, so that viewers would see big business American agriculture behind the content in his paintings.

“I let the materials speak for themselves. What farmworkers have to go through in the fields is not pretty, it’s not colorful or shiny.” That was how Martinez established the signature style that would distinguish his work as his career took off.

In 1997, 20 years prior to that moment, Martinez had come to the U.S. for the first time from Oaxaca, Mexico. Following the lead of his older brothers, who had made the journey first, he immigrated to Los Angeles at just 19 years old to join them in pursuit of education and work opportunities.

Martinez could not have anticipated that his move to the U.S. would lead him to a full-blown career as a painter. He started out with jobs picking produce. He and his brothers had farmworking experience from their upbringing in Oaxaca, which led them to that line of work in the U.S. At the same time, one of Martinez’s biggest ambitions upon arriving in Los Angeles was to learn English.

Martinez’s educational goals became the North Star that led him to the path of art. Starting with the desire to learn English, he enrolled in night school for an English language certificate, followed by a high school GED program for adults, where he fell in love with learning.

While he was on the college-bound track as a part-time student, financial hardships forced Martinez to take extended periods of time off from school to work long hours and save money. He spent months at a time in the summer picking produce in the fields of Washington state to pay for classes, which prolonged the time it took to complete his studies. Martinez did this for nine summers, leading up to his Master of Fine Arts degree from Cal State Long Beach, which he completed in 2018.

It was his first art history class as an undergraduate, though, that Martinez credits for sparking his interest in painting. After encountering work by 19th-century artists Vincent van Gogh and Jean-François Millet, who depicted farmworkers throughout their careers, Martinez was drawn to a sense of familiarity. (Millet's work is the subject of the current Getty Center exhibition Reckoning with Millet’s Man with a Hoe.)

“I think it was the nostalgia, the fact that I missed my family back in Oaxaca or the fact that I actually worked in the fields, that made me want to learn how to paint,” he said. “I thought: ‘I could learn how to paint. I can better my drawing skills. I can paint scenes of my hometown, my neighbors, my parents, my grandparents.’”

Today, Martinez carries on that inspiration, painting large-scale portraits that depict detailed scenes of farmworkers in the fields, hard at work. At this stage in his career, he now has a platform through his art to bring attention to the issues and ugly truths of the industry that he spent decades working in.

“If I want to emphasize some of the problems that exist in the fields, like pesticides, I draw images of farmworkers covered up with bandanas, goggles, and hoodies,” Martinez says. “If I want to emphasize the humanity of the people, I take off their bandanas and goggles so that viewers can see their features, see what they look like, and empathize with them.”

Each portrait is painted onto an arrangement of produce cardboard boxes as his canvas, a reference to big-business American agriculture that is behind those very issues and ugly truths.

“I often catch myself in the studio wondering if people are going to like my works because they are ugly. They are dusty, they barely have any color. Sometimes the cardboard is used up, and it’s wrinkled and stained. And it makes it ugly and uncomfortable.”

For Martinez, though, it’s clear that ugliness and discomfort spark curiosity and conversation. Following in the footsteps of the artists who inspired him in the first place, he’s realized that ugliness has oftentimes been a catalyst for global dialogue and cultural change. And to Martinez, that driving factor is ultimately what makes an artwork powerful and inspiring.