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Geoff Fox:

Since 2002, Geoff Fox has written about the offbeat and dynamic personalities that make Pasco County unique. He is now revisiting them, meeting new characters and sharing more stories. Email

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Rest Easy, John

Posted Apr 24, 2009 by Geoff Fox

Updated Apr 24, 2009 at 01:41 PM

Paper, stone, bar stools: to most people, they are everyday objects used for practical purposes.
In John Martinez, they triggered artistic expression. Paper could be drawn or painted on, or cut into geometric shapes to form wildlife; grave markers could be used to make intricate, compelling stone rubbings; bar stools were as important as artistic vehicles as for human relaxation.

I got a chance to interview Martinez a couple of days before New Year’s. It was for the second story I would write on Martinez, a Wesley Chapel artist, who had worked as a magazine designer at Time, Inc. before retiring from HBO, where he was a design director in the promotions department. Martinez died this week at 86. His wife, M.J. Martinez, whom he met at HBO, said he contracted pneumonia shortly after our last interview. Details about funeral arrangements were not immediately available. I didn’t know John well, but enjoyed talking with him. Obviously gifted, he spoke carefully and humbly, described his artwork in sophisticated detail and possessed a quiet sense of humor as abstract as his art. The son of a Puerto Rican father and Gibraltarian mother, Martinez started young, first sketching the then-famous comic book character Abie Kabibble on a sheet of paper at age 4. At 11, the New York native produced a watercolor version of Thomas Gainsborough’s 1770 painting “The Blue Boy.” The walls of his Wesley Chapel home are filled with his work and shelves are topped by his bronze-painted sculptures, including a craggy rendering of a boxer and an American Indian with wind-blown hair. “You can’t pin me down,” he said in December. “I don’t want to be identified with one thing. It’s more fun to change mediums and attitudes.” Here’s part of our last interview: