San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Wish is granted for teenage artist
Jaylah Martinez finds inspiration everywhere: in the movement of hands as people talk, in her family, in a portrait at a museum, in numbers and in bright, bold colors.
The 16-year-old, who said she started doing art “for real” only as a ninth-grader, has already sold two of her paintings, and she displayed a dozen more pieces at North Park Subaru Dominion on Saturday.
In “Fathers light,” a 3foot-by-4-foot canvas shows hands holding a candle, warmth radiating off the painting.
A recent self-portrait depicts Martinez, bald and with blue and green arms, her palms on her face, emerging from a floral background.
“It’s to represent a new turnover now, and how things are changing,” she said.
She showed off her work to a crowd of family and friends this weekend, and later this month, her pieces will be displayed in a gallery in Los Angeles as part of a wish fulfilled by Make-AWish Central & South Texas.
Martinez is fighting a rare form of kidney cancer, traveling to and from Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center several times a month for treatment.
A junior at Cibolo’s Steele High School, she’s now working with a teacher at home, keeping up with schoolwork in her favorite subjects: math and science.
The illness also has kept her from participating in the MOSAIC Student Artist Program at Blue Star Contemporary, where she works alongside other teen artists on personal and public art projects and is mentored in the studio and on the business side of art.
“She brings the joy to creating art,” said Alex Rubio, the program’s artist in residence. He called Martinez “a leader within our program” who inspires others in the community with her passion, natural creativity and vision.
The two pieces she has sold through the MOSAIC Program both prominently feature hands, which she said are among her favorite subjects. In one piece, multicolored hands reach for each other across the canvas, while in another, hands hold an apple and a pomegranate, inspired by a biblical reference.
“I like using hands to convey emotion,” she said, as well as “using lines and color to combine with the feelings I want to produce.”
For some pieces, her family members have been her models.
“She said, ‘Dad, I need you to work with me,’ ” her father, Juan Martinez, recalled. “She lit the candle and turned off the lights” and sketched the piece that would become “Fathers light.”
While she said she began taking art seriously only when she started high school, her proclivity to draw started long before that, said her mother, Sonja Martinez. It first became evident “probably when she was 5,” she said. “I always had a notepad in the car, I knew that she would draw, or she would write little stories as well.”
Since then, she’s moved on to oil pastels and acrylic. She starts by sketching, testing out the colors she wants and making sure everything fits correctly.
The same precision that drives her in developing a piece of art has fueled her interest in math and chemistry, where she enjoys learning “what things are composed of ” and how they can be combined and ordered to affect something else. “I find art in everything,” she said.
In college, she hopes to major in biochemistry and minor in art. “Because of all the research that’s going on to help me, I want to help others,” she said.
She wished to have her artwork displayed in Los Angeles, where “a lot of different types of people will see it,” she said.
“Jaylah is a special young lady,” said Jill Skinner, chief communications officer for Make-A-Wish Central & South Texas. “This is an extremely unique wish for a very unique kid.”
Wish-granting is a way to brighten the spirits of children and their families, she said, and can give them the physical and mental energy they need as they go through treatment. “There’s a healing effect on the family,” she said.
The trip is bittersweet, Sonja Martinez said: an exciting experience, but one made possible by the cancer Jaylah is fighing.
“It’s mixed emotions,” she said, “but I’m thankful that she loves art, and it’s a way to escape.”
“Because of the treatment, I sometimes feel down or I don’t feel like getting up or eating,” Jaylah said. “But the art kind of calls me and says ‘you have to get up.’ It gives me the energy to do what I need.”