Woman Eternal

"Painting female nudes is a very natural thing for a guy to do," says former Miamian Martin Hoffman, shown above in his new Manhattan studio with a huge Flying Tiger self-portrait. "I love their pure classical form, but I also try to make mine physical, to create a living presence on canvas with paint that picks up light like skin. So I use the traditional method of under-and overpainting; it's the simplest way to say the most with the least. What my portraits say, though, is hard to pin down. But to me they're like time machines, moving back and forth from antiquity to the present--and beyond. They're caught somewhere in between."