Somewhere on the country roads below the Mission Mountains, Marti de Alva was startled when a flock of birds suddenly burst out of the fields into the air, “like an urgent flag waving.  I was so unaccountably moved by the sight, I had to pull over, so I could keep watching.  Their movement was so.... elegant!.”

Her own career in a haitus, and her three children now grown, Marti was searching for new direction.  She couldn’t help but wonder about this sudden keenly felt awareness of the every day world around her, and what it might be pointing her towards.
 Although always interested in the arts, and involved with various community art activities, Marti had never thought of herself as an artist.  However, these first tastes of solitude, brought forth her latent artistic life.  “It wasn't an easy time,” says de Alva, “but it was transformative in very real ways.  Something really did begin to wake up in me.  Finally, I pulled out my old camera to see if using it could help me translate what was stirring inside of me.”  She hasn’t looked back since.


Often with softer gradations of color and light, de Alva’s images give us Montana landscapes that do not dwarf the viewer in their stark grandeur, but rather ease the viewer into more intimate, subdued scenes.  The landscapes carry a relaxed solitude that echoes the quiet and undistracted mindset in which de Alva discovered her artistic impulse and life.  In her more energetic work, the movements of dancers take on a ghostly blur even while the sharp outlines of their figures spring out against hazy backgrounds of motion and light.

In addition to her photographic prints, Marti’s artwork is beginning to incorporate other media, including imported papers, watercolors, various pigments and fabric.  “I’m attracted to the textures and colors of other media that expand the possibilities for creative expression, and look forward to experimenting with them.”

You can see more of Marti's work at www.riversongphoto.com