Martha’s painting was both work–she painted for a living–and pleasure, and she was concerned that her work bring pleasure to viewers. She said in a 1987 interview, “I have no profound idea about what my work is going to say, but I want people to live with it, to be comforted by it.” She had a powerful sense of color, and her style has been described as “expressionistic, outlined, bold, colorful.” She painted, she said, “with the intention to express what you feel on a raw level.” She favored simple, familiar objects–fruit, flowers, umbrellas–that explode with color and impact.
The qualities of intelligence, vivid apprehension, affection, and keen insight that mark her work are ciphers for the woman behind the paintings. Martha had a gift for friendship and for companionship. Her interests ran from art to politics to poetry to history and beyond. She loved flowers and sunlight and water. Her sharp eye for detail and fine sense of timing made her a natural storyteller and inspired conversationalist. Nothing was lost on Martha and no one enjoyed the significant things of life–beauty, wit, humor, love–more. She shared that joy through her work.
Martha Ward was born in 1951 and spent most of her growing-up years in the small university town of Auburn, Alabama. Her father is the poet Hayden Carruth and her mother, Sara Hudson, is professor emerita of English at Auburn University. Martha studied at Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University and earned both a BA and an MA in history. Her three sons are Britton, now 28, Hayden, age 15, and Robin, age 11. Her husband, Jerome Ward, is a paleobotanist who teaches at Auburn and is curator of the Auburn University Herbarium.
Martha always had a love of art and painting. In the early 1980s, after working as a counselor, teacher, and claims representative, she devoted her energy full-time to painting. In 1985 the Ward family moved to Davis, California. It was there where her painting career blossomed. Her work showed in various venues in California, including Yuba College and the Natsoulas Novelozo Gallery in Davis. A member of The Artery, an artists’ collective in Davis, she drew support and inspiration from fellow members and relished opportunities to share ideas and be a part of a community of artists.
Martha was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer in August, 1990. She faced, in the words of her primary physician, Marshall Urist, “odds that predicted only a few months of life.” She moved back to Alabama to be near family and set about defying those odds. Supported by her family and many friends, she took an active part in seeking the best, often the newest and most innovative, treatment. Martha’s commitment to being a part of her children’s lives for as long as possible, as well as her genuine zest for life, helped her through painful and debilitating surgeries and treatment regimens. When she died, in Birmingham on November 17, 1997, she was seeking out possible new treatments and setting an example that inspired the respect and admiration of her doctors as well as her friends and family.