Martin Rollins is a native of Louisville, who received his BFA from the Louisville School of Art in 1981, and his MFA from the University of Cincinnati in 1987. The major focus of his collegiate fine artwork focused on painting, drawing and fiber media.

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As a participant in the Kentucky Arts Council, he has worked with educators and students as an Artist in Residence in schools across the state of Kentucky. In his work as a Art Specialist, Rollins has taught in the Jefferson County Public Schools and Walden School in Louisville. In his work with the Kentucky Center’s education programs, he has served as 

a visual arts faculty for the Kentucky Institute for the Arts in Education and the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts. 

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As Associate Curator of Education for School Programs with the Speed Art Museum, Rollins was the school-museum liaison, and a key contributor to the Kentucky Educational Television/ Kentucky Department of Education’s Visual Arts Toolkit project. And as an independent educator he has worked with the Southern Arts Federation’s Tradition/ Innovation traveling exhibition, and he has taught as an adjunct instructor for both the University of Cincinnati and the University of Louisville.

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Martin Rollins’ artwork uses oil pastels and related media, and focuses primarily on urban and suburban cityscapes and landscapes. The oil pastel medium is a somewhat temperamental medium, and Rollins’ work is noted for its expressive handling of the material and the artist’s mark-making.

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Rollins employs the medium’s saturated color and range of surface qualities on images of domestic architecture, parks, and open vistas of streets and roads.