The Hastings Gallery at Sandhills Community College current exhibit features work by Ray Martin, chairman of the Art Department at Greensboro College.

Martin was born and raised near the Sandhills tobacco farms of his grandfathers. From the time he could get a nubby pencil and the back of an envelope from his grandma, he drew characters.

Martin earned a bachelor's degree in drawing and painting at the School of Art at East Carolina University, where he has since been chosen as one of their outstanding alumni.

His master's in fine arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was funded by art scholarships.

Among other jobs, he has worked as a secondary school art educator in Moore County, as a freelance illustrator, a director of a gifted and talented program in Charleston, S.C., and an Artist-in-the-Schools for Green Hill Center for N.C. Art. He has taught at colleges in North and South Carolina, and has exhibited his art widely in the Southeastern region.

He has also primed tobacco, loaded peach trucks, worked assembly lines in furniture and hosiery factories, and crimped tubes in a warehouse.

Martin serves as the chairman of the Art Department at Greensboro College, where he has taught for 16 years.

Among other offerings, he has taught studio art and art education and has twice received the college's exemplary teaching award.

The paintings currently on exhibit at Sandhills are created in oils, watercolor and mixed media.

The works on display exhibit naturalistic landscapes reflecting the visual dialogue between the observational truth of the motif and the perceptual sensations of the artist.

Martin paints as nature's "consciousness," allowing the landscape to "think itself through him," as Cezanne would say. Other works are fantastical paintings full of allegory and symbolism, weaving visual metaphors together into a sort of hyper-reality, approximating that of dreams.

The narrative aspect of these images places Martin in the grand tradition of Southern and Native American storytellers.