Prelude – Why I Became an Artist

Hi, I’m Marty Treinen. I have been an Artrepreneur most of my life. . I love the process of taking what I’m seeing and creating new experiences for different audiences, across the art spectrum.
As a kid, I loved to look at art and could not get enough of it. Most of my exposure came from books I borrowed from the Sioux City, Iowa library. There, I built a foundation in art and discovered artists from every period and culture.

I learned to draw and paint by copying Picasso, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Albrecht Dürer. However seeing something in a book is a lot different than seeing it in person. As I grew older, I traveled and saw some of my favorite works — Monet’s Water Lilies, drawings, and paintings by Da Vinci and Michelangelo.
I have never stopped loving books or going to see artwork in neighborhoods or major museums. Every type of art is where you find it. You just need to be paying attention. It’s a kind of joy I’ve always had. And why I added a degree in Museum Education and Exhibit Development, while working for major museums.

Introduction

I am again taking liberties — writing about my own work, but this time not for critics or collectors, but for our community.
I do this simply because I have the opportunity, and because I believe others in our community will find something important in both my writing and the artwork that I’ve created over a 40 year period. 

For too long, these works have remained quiet — seen only by close friends, tucked away like sacred memories. But they were never meant to stay hidden. They were born out of love, loss, and a need to understand what it means to survive when so many we loved could not.

As artists, we have always been the keepers of feeling — translating what others cannot say into something they can see. And I know my place in that.
To help change the world for the better, before it’s too late.
To remind us in the gay community,  who supported us when the world turned away. There were so many.  They included caregivers from across our communities.  They are mothers, daughters, nieces, sons, grandparents ,fathers, nurses, and doctors who stood up, and reached out to say,  “You are not alone.”

This is written for all of us. For those who remember. For those who still grieve quietly. And for those who never knew, but will need to understand.
Because grief, when transformed, can become something extraordinary — it can become pure energy.

Art, for me, has always been a way of putting things together — ideas, materials, and experiences that weren’t together before. It’s how I solve problems and make sense of the world. That’s why I’ve worked in so many mediums and creative industries — film, theater, museums, interior design, and architecture. It’s all part of the same conversation. Picasso once said, “Anything you can imagine is real.” For me, every act of creation is a form of remembering — an attempt to make something intangible, visible. That’s what art does. It makes understood something you didn’t understand before. And as an artist, all of us create a different perspective, often so unimaginable, or out of sight, that when it’s exposed, it can make people sit up and notice. 

The Awakening

In the 1990s, I experienced two things that changed my art and my life. Up to that point, most of my work was figurative, such as portraits. But in the summer of 1994, what I saw from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan would change the way I viewed those around me.
What I experienced that summer was the Aurora Borealis. The common image is the shimmering lights in the sky. This was nothing like that at all. The night sky was alive, with unimaginable colors, that shot across the sky like wisps of dust, in a million different colors. They moved so fast and the light, was intense. It was an experience created out of pure intense light, a full spectrum of color, and pure energy. It was more than I could have imagined. It was all around me.
This would have an effect on my upcoming work, more than I could have expected. 

I realize that I made art for many reasons — to remember, to hold on to things that mattered, and to better understand them. My art signifies aspects of my life that can only be expressed through visual language. Some pieces represent people or places with deep personal meaning, others are simply moments of joy. But all of it helps me see and remember.

The Darkness Arrives

Starting in the 1980s, the first internationally known actor, Rock Hudson, died. And what he died of changed the world and made it stand up and notice — but not in a good way.
The AIDS crisis made it into the mainstream and was no longer relegated to the gay subculture. It was here to stay.
It became a very dark day for America. All that was wrong with the way what Americans thought was coming out full force, and it was destructive, abusive, and an intentional hatred.

But it wasn’t strangers whose lives were being extinguished by indifference, religious hatred, violence, and murder.
These were the people that I knew — friends, lovers, artists, and colleagues across the spectrum. And it would hit me hard, and leave the arts in shambles. Whole arts organizations were devastated. A friend who lived in San Francisco at the time lost over 3 Hundred friends. A majority of the gay men’s choir, and many individuals that supported the non-profits in the area. 

People I cherished were becoming sick and dying. The AIDS pandemic was devastating the gay community. For me the loss of so many of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances, was beyond devastating. It was beyond….

The Breaking Point
There was a painting in our home at the time — a large painting of Jeff. He is naked to the world, sitting in a pool of water. His eyes are closed, and he seems to be at peace. I don’t know why I set him in water, maybe some kind of baptism. We no longer own that painting, but I still have the original concepts, and had to look through a multiple of folios, before I found them. I needed to. As an audience you need to see what was, and what he was to become.

At that time we lived in Indianapolis, and I would travel out of town daily to work on a historic restoration. On my way home I would stop to see my best friend Jeff C., who was in the hospital.
I hated hospitals — it was the smell that would get to me — so on the way there, I often would stop by the bar and get a drink before heading on.

This night, however, was different. When I went to Jeff’s room, he was not there. He had been moved into the ICU. I had never been to the ICU, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I got to that part of the hospital, I asked at the nurses’ station where Jeff was. I needed to see him.  

The nurse was polite. She told me that he was D.E.C.ed. What did that mean? I just didn’t get it.
She looked at me and said quietly that he had passed away.

Right then and there, I moved down the hall into the doorway and collapsed on the floor.
I was not just crying. Animals in pain don’t even make that kind of sound. It was more intense than I had ever felt. I had been to a lot of funerals, but I was really unprepared.
The next thing that I knew, I was looking down upon myself from the top of the wall, where it meets the ceiling. And all I could do was watch myself, in a state of pain that I had not seen in anyone before.

I now imagined what a parent would feel at the loss of a child.
I watched as a mother and older daughter passed this stranger, not noticing or even looking down in any kind of acknowledgment.

That is the kind of grief that I still experience today, but it is lessened because of how I would learn to cope — how I would come to handle my grief.
A grief that I know is unspoken in our community, by men in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. I know it’s still there, because at times I can see it in their eyes. 

The Understanding

I remembered the auroras and what Einstein had said — that energy is neither created nor destroyed.
And so where did all the energy from the lives of my friends go?

The only way I could deal with the grief was to imagine that their living energy was not gone, but had merely transformed into pure energy — energy that moved out into the universe and was still around me. Colorful, intense, and in constant motion. To reimagine them as still around me, gave me the ability to remember them, for the characters, and personalities they were. The energy in the new artwork made it possible for me to simply see them as I knew them, full of life, full of energy. 

And so started a whole series of artworks, which became the New Hope Series.

The Moment of Transformation

The image that you see in the header above the article, is the study that I did two weeks before Jeff passed away. It was the artwork that I was creating at the time. An over life size ¾ portrait of him.
But it was something that he said to me that day, as he sat on that stool in my studio. He said something that made my blood run cold, and it still does every time I see that photo. The image that I keep hidden.  

Looking me straight in the eye, in a soft voice that was his, he said, “Marty, you know that this body is my prison.”

Nothing more was said. I knew what I was doing, and it was selfish. Creating images of all my friends so that I would have something to remember them by. I wasn’t thinking of them, but just myself. That’s something that I won’t get over. 

After finishing that painting, the last figurative work I would do, until some 20 years later.  I started creating these new images. The image next, in the header is one that I created of Jeff in transformation — and that is the one that I keep in my studio, next to my desk.
It was the first work created for the New Hope Series.

(There was only one way to redeem myself, and that was after any of them had passed, I gave the original artwork to their mother, father or spouse. They were never mine. Like all art, once they leave the presence of the artist, they belong to anyone who might experience them. And what I’m left with, is both the memory of who they are, and the memory of the artwork inspired by them.)

The New Beginning

And so I spent the next 15+ years creating new works about people that I knew well that had passed away.   You can look back on the whole new series of work if you visit my website. 

Moving to Palm Springs with my husband was the best thing that we had done for each other and ourselves. This is where we found real community, and the opportunity to both write, speak and exhibit the New Hope Series. Something that had not really crossed my mind. It will be that community that will finally see and experience the artwork started 30 years ago. And bring it into a new light.  Artwork that was out of sight, will now see the light of day. And I could not be happier. What artist doesn’t want to share their work? 

The Offering

I now live in a community where I can share my experience with those in our community that still hold the hidden grief — of lovers, friends, partners, and husbands lost.
But not just from AIDS — from old age, cancer, and other reasons. How they passed may not matter. Across the glove, there are billions of people that hold on to their memories. And that is why we create art. A physical reminder of the love someone else felt for us..

I hope that you are able to view my work and find some kind of solace — to think that all of the energy that existed within that person while they were alive was not lost.
That everything they were, has simply been transformed, and that it surrounds us. And remind us of the good they brought to our worlds. 

Become the Artist Within You

Everyone is creative. Every one of us has the power to imagine, to build, to bring something new into the world. So go out and make art—in whatever form calls to you. Paint, dance, write, sing, sculpt, photograph—use whatever you have at hand.  And forget every voice that ever told you that you couldn’t. Throw off those old limits and jump in.

We live in a remarkable time—one overflowing with people eager to help others create. There are books, videos, workshops, and whole communities waiting to share what they know. YouTube alone is a library of human creativity.

Don’t judge your work. Just begin. And then keep going—because where you are today is not where you’ll be tomorrow. Growth is our nature. We are meant to evolve, to learn, and to create continuously.

And when you do, share what you make. Your art—your effort, your expression—is a gift. A gift to yourself, and a gift to your community. Some may not recognize that gift. That’s their loss.
But listen instead to the ones with a spark in their eyes and excitement in their voices—
They’re the ones who’ve accepted the gift of creativity, and they’re waiting to welcome you home.

About the Artist/Artrepreneur.  

Marty Treinen is an fine artist, artrepreneur, arts educator, writer, and co-author of Universal Creative Intelligence: How the Arts and Sciences Propel Human Experience. His career bridges the arts across the full spectrum of creative practice, cultural experience, and education—all grounded in the belief that the creative process is essential to human evolution. Treinen’s work underscores how creativity shapes not only how we tell stories but also how we live them.

Marty, maintains a full fine art site, that includes artwork from the past 30 years. Many works are still available as fine art print.  www.marty-treinen-art.com