This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following, submitted June 2005, is from Michael O'Brien who, as a friend of the artist's daughter, first met Charles Martin in 1972.
He worked several years prior to my meeting him as a carpenter. He had an accident at his place of work and lost the index, middle and ring fingers on his right hand on a circular saw. After surgery on his hand in which the remainders of the 3 fingers were removed, he did his own rehabilitation program by taping a hammer to his right hand (to support the thumb and little finger) and made a sheet-bronze sculpture which he set in front of his house at 2809 W. Roosevelt in Phoenix. The house there was his own design and was made by him.
Aside from the "Man of the Desert" and "Woman of the Desert", he made one marble sculpture titled "Communion" which was displayed at a community college
in the west end of Phoenix.
He made a sculpture of a Navajo on a horse. A beautiful piece of work, although I don't know what became of it.
He did one abstract piece, sort of like an Indian drawing of the sun, with a piece of spider-web turequoise in the center of it. Here also, I don't know the name of the
piece or its whereabouts.
All of the work he did during our acquaintenance was in the lost-wax technique.
Charles Martin fought with a case of leukemia throughout the time I knew him. He eventually died of it.
His wife, Laurel Martin, once told me that Charles had studied for a while under a student of Auguste Rodin.
I knew him as a strong-willed, creative person with a love of classical music (especially piano pieces by Jan Paderewski) and a very positive orientation to life.
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