I was born in Evanston, Ill,  lived in St. Louis, then graduated from Yale before I moved to Nashville after working for DuPont, Electric Boat, and serving as a pilot in the US Air Force.  I founded Hobby Lobby which gave me a chance to continue my hobby of flying model airplanes.


I have painted all my life and sold my first paintings almost sixty years ago.  My paintings are in dozens of private collections around the United States. I sold Hobby lobby and retired from it in 2008, so I am able to spend more time painting. 


In the past few years I discovered that an interesting painting is frequently one that takes on a life of its own during its creation. When I “nail” a painting it is usually one that created itself during the painting process and I can look at it when it’s completed and enjoy seeing what it has decided to become.


I particularly like paintings that seem to generate their own light and in paintings that can suggest different moods to different viewers.

                                                     Jim Martin

Buy your painting ON APPROVAL.  This is something that I just started to do with some of my friends.  You can take the painting home and hang it up and if, after you have had it for a few days, you decide that you don’t want it YOU CAN RETURN IT TO ME.  I won’t deposit your check until you tell me to.  Or I’ll refund to your credit card. So...don’t worry too much about whether it’ll be right for you. You don’t have to take that risk!  This applies to paintings bought after September 1, 2013

“Intersections”

16”x16”

$150

(ada)

“Progression”

16”x16”

$120

ada

“Gestation”

8”x24”

$100

“In or Out”

10”x20”

$120

(ada)

“Regeneration”

16”x20”

$125

“September Fifth”

16”x20”

$180

SOLD yod

Entrance. . .”

14”x18”

$100

(ada)

“Still There”

16”x16”

$90

ada

“The Moon Was Yellow That Night”

16”x20”

$310

(ada)

“The Blue Edge of the Universe”

16”x20”

$190

(ada)

“The Heat Came”

16”x20”

$250

“Revival Is Not Obvious”

16”x20”

$250

“The Heat Came (2)”

36” x24”

$900

“The Blue Edge of the Universe, 2”

24”x24”

$300

“September 5 (2)”

16”x20”

$275

ada

“The Heat Came (3)”

36” x24”

$900

“Sun Through Cedars”

16”x20”

$90

“At the Edge”

18”x24”

$225

“Gulf Sky”

16”x20”

$250

“Sunlight Through Birch Trees”

18”x24”

$250

“Sun Through Birches,2 ”

16”x20”

$375

“Sun Through Birches, 3”

18”x24”

$390

“Light Through Leaves”

24‘X18”

$225

“Elation”

24” x 24”

$795

“That Friday Morning When the Shore Came Apart”

24”x24”

$1250

“The Next Day One Landed on the Beach”

24”x24”

$1250

“Magnolia”

48”x30”

$1650


Paintings for Sale


There is now a universe and once there wasn’t, and some unimaginable power made it and made it a universe in which creation could take place and evolution could take place and in which I could exist and in which I could even be aware that I exist.


I try to paint my visions of that universe.

                                                                  Jim Martin

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