From Furniture Factory to Artist's Studio in the Bronx

Móyòsórè "Moyo" Martins loves to paint at midnight.

- By Wendy Goodman

Móyòsórè "Moyo" Martins moved his workspace into this 3,000 plus-square-foot studio in a former furniture factory in Mott Haven in December 2021. He'd been working from his Harlem apartment and using a bedroom as his studio. But things had become cramped. Then he found this space on the Listings Project. It took two months to clean out. One thing it also had lots of natural light from the windows and the six skylights would have seemed like a bonus. But Martins painted them black.

"I really don't paint during the day," he says. "During the day, I do what I call scribbling and scratching-the final touches before the work is complete. Sometimes I paint to study what I'm going to paint overnight."