Hathor’s Tribe: Who is your muse, who inspires you?
Marta Wiley: My muses are my sister and my lovers. The ancients who walk the earth.
The magic in everyday people and things.
Hathor’s Tribe: Are you a visual artist, writer, or musician or film maker?
Marta Wiley: Artist and painter.
Hathor’s Tribe: Do you work in other creative venues?
Marta Wiley: I'm starting to do Videos.
Hathor’s Tribe: What artists have influenced your work?
Marta Wiley: My Grandmother Martha Gottfried, Cristiana Cole, Nina Pak. Kathe
Kollowitz, Sargent, Evard Munch, all the impressionists. Dali, Picasso and Andy Warhol
ect.
Hathor’s Tribe: At what age did you have an interest in art, and when did you first
realize you would be an artist?
Marta Wiley: I started painting at 2. It was my first language.
Hathor’s Tribe: Do you plan out your work before you do it, or does it evolve
organically?
Marta Wiley: Spontaneously.
Hathor’s Tribe: Is there a mental process? do you have a question to ask or answer?
Marta Wiley: It's an emotional journey into the sacred and profane. It is cathartic.
Hathor’s Tribe: If you have had formal training, do you feel your educational
process hindered your artistic expression in anyway?
Marta Wiley: No not school. But painting to make money is a double edged sword. I love
to be of service to people. I love to inspire them. The darker imagery is a hard sell. I try to
balance the darker edge with my music.
Hathor’s Tribe: Do you use the creative process to express your internal conflicts or
to purge yourself of emotions?
Marta Wiley: Yes. It is my therapy and sanity.
Hathor’s Tribe: If so, do you feel that art can be a kind of therapy?
Marta Wiley: Yes. Helps to transcend the ego and all the "identity crisis" that comes with
life.
Hathor’s Tribe: What is your opinion about the current art movements which focus on
dark imagery?
Marta Wiley: I used to think that all good art dealt with death. I do tend to get gothic. But
lately I think depression is boring. I think all the darkness can be just as cliché as all the
happy fluff. It's really the ability to blend the light and the dark which inspires me.
Pleasure and pain balanced just right will give you an exquisite feeling of bliss, even
rapture.
Hathor’s Tribe: Do you make art for yourself, or do you have a market in mind?
Marta Wiley: For myself first. I also sell to the home decor market. I have found that if I
stick to the classics I have better luck. Floral's, figurative, mythology of all kinds, and
nature.
Hathor’s Tribe: Do you believe that art has a higher purpose, other than to decorate a
room?
Marta Wiley: Not for the masses. But for select few who appreciate art it can change your
life.
Hathor’s Tribe: if so, please explain?
Marta Wiley: I just saw an Artemisia Gentileschi's painting of Judith Slaying holofernes.
Judith was a Jewish widow of noble rank in Bethulia, a town besieged by the army of the
Assyrian general Holofernes. She approached his tent as an emissary and captivated him
with her beauty. He ordered a feast with much wine. After he passed out in his tent,
Judith and her maid Abra saw their opportunity. Judith decapitated Holofernes with his
sword and smuggled his head back to Bethulia. On seeing her trophy, the townsfolk
routed the leaderless Assyrians. The story is an allegory picturing Judith as Judaism in
triumph over its pagan enemy.
I saw the movie about her life and I remember how it moved me inexpressibly. But seeing
the painting for the first time at the phoenix Art Museum was like looking into a window
of time or a portal into her soul. Her essence will always be imbued in that painting and
that realization made me tremble in my shoes.
My art will outlive me. As this painting outlived her. I like that thought. It comes back to
Identity. while the masses are savagely trying to reproduce themselves at all costs, artists
can immortalize themselves quietly and sometimes with even more meaning than carbon
copy of the self.
Hathor’s Tribe: If you could meet any artist from the past who would it be?
Marta Wiley: I would like to meet Leonardo da vinci. Not because of all the hype these
days around him. But because I feel he was an emissary of light in many ways. I would
like to meet Kathe Kollowitz also and Artemisia.
Hathor’s Tribe: In what way do you want to be remembered?
Marta Wiley: I want to be remembered as a Picasso of our times, but in the feminine
influence. I like what Gandhi and John Lennon and Martin Luther King did also.
Revolution through a peaceful means.
I want to influence mass consciousness, mass change on a global scale through awareness
and light.
I want to influence "responsibility" to our environment, our children, our animals, our
planet.