In his densely layered abstract paintings, Mario Martinez blends fragments of his life in Brooklyn, New York alongside motifs from the natural world: cosmic imagery, rock formations, flora and fauna. Martinez is a member of The Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, and his reverence for nature is drawn from the spiritual traditions of the Yaqui people. His palette reflects the Sonoran Desert of California and Arizona where he grew up, with its year-round cerulean skies, molten orange sunsets, and ochre clay soil. His fragmentary, abstract style departs from more figurative styles commonly associated with Indigenous Art, taking inspiration from American Abstract Expressionist painters including Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner and Willem de Kooning. Though influenced by the bold, linear figurative style of Indigenous painters such as R.C. Gorman and Fritz Scholder, Martinez finds that abstraction offers a more universal visual language with which to share his Yaqui heritage, centered on the deep connection that his people have forged with the land across 40,000 years of tradition and culture.