Dreams of Falling: Breanna Cee Martins
“I’m Portuguese, and we have a term, saudade, which is nostalgia for a place you’ve never been or something you’ve never experienced. Nostalgia for imaginary experiences. I started thinking about that as I started to play with paint.”
Spontaneity is at the center of Martins's practice. She mixes watercolor with hydrogen peroxide and bleach, letting images swim to the surface, and the final result reveals itself only once the work has dried. She steers where she can with brushes, pipettes, spray bottles, magic erasers, and sandpaper, and releases control where she can't. Her monochromatic figures glow with unexpected color, often with an undertone of quiet danger: children at play on the edge of something lethal, a boy floating in a pool with his head just above the water, balloons on the verge of deflating. Women appear in delicate, layered washes, limbs flowing into one another. Throughout, Martins asks whether childhood was ever really simple, or only appears so in retrospect.
ALLGORITHIM Presents Dreams of Falling, an Online Exhibition of New Work by Breanna Cee Martins on Artsy
On view October 30, 2026 - January 30, 2027
Known for large-scale watercolors mounted on canvas, Martins paints ghostly figures that surface like faded photographs or half-remembered dreams. Dreams of Falling brings together works that live in the instant before the drop: the held breath, the step too close to the edge, the moment a memory begins to slip away.
Having lost her family albums when she immigrated to the United States, Martins works from found black-and-white portraits, reimagining the lives of strangers whose images were left behind. She catches her subjects on the precipice of a moment: children playing at the edge of something lethal, a boy floating with his head just above the water, balloons on the verge of deflating.
Her process mirrors her subject. Mixing watercolor with hydrogen peroxide and bleach, Martins lets images swim to the surface, each revealed only once it has dried. Like falling in a dream, the outcome is never fully in her hands.
"I'm Portuguese, and we have a term, saudade, which is nostalgia for a place you've never been or something you've never experienced," says Martins. "Nostalgia for imaginary experiences."
About the Artist
Breanna Cee Martins (b. 1987) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2011 and has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad, with recent solo exhibitions including Holy Terrors at Col Gallery, San Francisco (2024); Poor Unfortunate Souls at Aeronaut, Boston (2024); and The Labyrinth at Palazzo Ca' Zanardi, Venice (2021). Her work is held in the collections of Beth DeWoody, Kate Spade, Brooke Shields, and David Kratz, among others.